THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE  NEW  POLITICS 

AND    OTHER    PAPERS 


THE  NEW  POLITICS 

AND 

OTHER  PAPERS  BY 
WILLIAM  GARROTT  BROWN 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

1914 


COFYRIGHT,  1914,  BY  EUGENE  L.   BROWN 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  May  iqi* 


College 
Library 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF 
GROVER  CLEVELAND 


1577973 


CONTENTS 

THE   NEW   POLITICS  — 

THE   ISSUES 3 

PARTIES  AND  MEN 30 

PROPHETIC   VOICES   ABOUT   AMERICA  .     63 

THE    WHITE    PERIL:    THE    IMMEDIATE 

DANGER   OF   THE   NEGRO     .       .  .103 

THE   SOUTH   AND    THE    SALOON    .        .  .143 

PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY      .  .163 
GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS  — 

TO  THEODORE  ROOSEVELT,  MARCH  4,  1909  .    197 

TO  WILLIAM  H.  TAFT,  MARCH  4,  1909      .  .    206 

TO  WILLIAM  H.  TAFT,  MARCH  4,  1913      ,  .    21 6 

TO  WOODROW  WILSON,   MARCH  4,  1913     .  .226 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 


THE  NEW  POLITICS 


i 

THE  ISSUES 


TO  a  superficial  view  there  is  little  in  the 
present  state  of  our  public  affairs  to  sug- 
gest the  notion  of  any  marked  transition.  There 
are  no  wars  or  rumors  of  wars  ;  even  the  prophe- 
cies and  forebodings  of  that  sort  of  excitement 
seem  to  lack  conviction.  They  are  but  mildly 
lugubrious,  and  yield  few  shudders.  Peace  reigns 
—  and  prosperity,  which  is  tamer  still.  Nor  is 
there  any  "  malice  domestic  "  that  looks  particu- 
larly threatening.  Sectional  jealousies,  though 
occasionally  stirred,  do  not  leap  into  flame.  Party 
feeling,  as  between  the  two  great  parties,  has  sel- 
dom been  so  weak.  Exciting  and  dramatic  per- 
sonal rivalries  are  equally  wanting.  There  is 
nothing,  for  instance,  to  compare  with  the  long 
confrontments  of  Jefferson  and  Hamilton,  of  Clay 
and  Jackson,  of  Douglas  and  Lincoln.  There  is, 
indeed,  a  vigorous  and  heated  struggle  between 
two  factions  in  one  of  the  great  parties,  and  the 

3 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

two  wings  of  the  other  great  party  may  soon  fol- 
low suit  and  favor  us  with  a  set-to ;  but  neither 
division  has  as  yet  gone  far  enough  to  produce 
changes  that  can  be  regarded  as  clearly  revolu- 
tionary. 

But  great  changes  in  the  political  life  of  a 
people  do  not  always  come  violently,  dramati- 
cally. Some  of  the  greatest  have  come,  like  those 
in  nature,  quietly.  There  is,  I  believe,  a  feeling 
among  thoughtful  men  that  such  a  change  is  in 
fact  coming  over  our  political  life  to-day ;  and 
very  good  reasons  may  be  given  for  this  view. 

Twenty-two  years  ago,  Mr.  Bryce,  coming  to 
the  end  of  his  "  American  Commonwealth,"  had 
this  to  say  about  the  future  :  — 

America,  in  her  swift  onward  progress,  sees,  looming 
on  the  horizon  and  now  no  longer  distant,  a  time  of 
mists  and  shadows,  wherein  dangers  may  be  concealed 
whose  form  and  magnitude  she  can  scarcely  yet  conjec- 
ture. As  she  fills  up  her  Western  regions  with  inhabit- 
ants, she  sees  the  time  approach  when  all  the  best  land 
will  have  been  occupied,  and  when  the  land  now  under 
cultivation  will  have  been  so  far  exhausted  as  to  yield 
scantier  crops  even  to  more  expensive  culture.  Al- 
though transportation  may  also  have  then  become 
cheaper,  the  price  of  food  will  rise ;  farms  will  be  less 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

easily  obtained  and  will  need  more  capital  to  work  them 
with  profit ;  the  struggle  for  existence  will  become  more 
severe.  And  while  the  outlet  which  the  West  now 
provides  for  the  overflow  of  the  great  cities  will  have 
become  less  available,  the  cities  will  have  grown  im- 
mensely more  populous ;  pauperism,  now  confined  to 
some  six  or  seven  of  the  greatest,  will  be  more  widely 
spread ;  wages  will  probably  sink  and  work  be  less 
abundant.  In  fact,  the  chronic  evils  and  problems  of 
old  societies  and  crowded  countries,  such  as  we  see 
them  to-day  in  Europe,  will  have  reappeared  on  this 
new  soil. 

More  than  eighty  years  ago  —  that  is  to  say, 
sixty  years  before  Mr.  Bryce's  forecast — Macau- 
lay,  who  never  saw  America,  writing  a  reply  to 
John  Stuart  Mill's  essay  on  government,  and 
controverting  Mill's  view  that  monarchies  and 
aristocracies  are  always  more  rapacious  than  de- 
mocracies, introduced  this  striking  passage :- 

Despots,  we  see,  do  plunder  their  subjects,  though 
history  and  experience  tell  them  that,  by  prematurely 
exacting  the  means  of  profusion,  they  are  in  fact  de- 
vouring the  seed-corn  from  which  the  future  harvest 
of  revenue  is  to  spring.  Why,  then,  should  we  sup- 
pose that  the  people  will  be  deterred  from  procuring 
immediate  relief  and  enjoyment  by  the  fear  of  distant 
calamities  —  of  calamities  which  perhaps  may  not  be 
fully  felt  till  the  times  of  their  grandchildren?  .  .  . 


THE    NEW    POLITICS 

The  case  of  the  United  States  is  not  in  point.  In  a 
country  where  the  necessities  of  life  are  cheap  and  the 
wages  of  labor  high,  where  a  man  who  has  no  capital 
but  his  legs  and  arms  may  expect  to  become  rich  by 
industry  and  frugality,  it  is  not  very  decidedly  even  for 
the  immediate  advantage  of  the  poor  to  plunder  the 
rich  ;  and  the  punishment  of  doing  so  would  very 
speedily  follow  the  offense.  But  in  countries  in  which 
the  great  majority  live  from  hand  to  mouth,  and  in 
which  vast  masses  of  wealth  have  been  accumulated  by 
a  comparatively  small  number,  the  case  is  widely  dif- 
ferent. The  immediate  want  is,  at  particular  seasons, 
craving,  imperious,  irresistible.  In  our  own  time  it  has 
steeled  men  to  the  fear  of  the  gallows,  and  urged  them 
on  the  point  of  the  bayonet.  And,  if  these  men  had  at 
their  command  that  gallows,  and  those  bayonets,  which 
now  scarcely  restrain  them,  what  is  to  be  expected? 
Nor  is  this  state  of  things  one  which  can  exist  only 
under  a  bad  government.  .  .  .  Therefore,  the  better 
the  government,  the  greater  is  the  inequality  of  condi- 
tions ;  and  the  greater  the  inequality  of  conditions,  the 
stronger  are  the  motives  which  impel  the  populace  to 
spoliation.  As  for  America,  we  appeal  to  the  twentieth 
century. 

The  twentieth  century  is  upon  us.  Mr.  Bryce 
named  thirty  years  as  the  period  which,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  best  judges,  still  intervened  be- 
tween the  America  he  was  writing  about  and 
the  coming  of  the  time  when  Americans  would 

6 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

find  themselves  confronted  with  the  questions 
which  had  already  long  beset  older  and  more 
crowded  countries.  That  period  is  not  yet  ex- 
hausted ;  but  the  pace  of  our  American  advance 
has  been  accelerated.  I  think  we  can  hardly 
doubt  that  certain  new  public  issues  which  within 
the  last  two  or  three  years  have  come  very  swiftly 
to  the  front  are  such  as  both  Mr.  Bryce  in  1888 
and  Macaulay  in  1829  foresaw  that  we  should 
ultimately  have  to  face ;  that  they  have  come  to 
stay ;  that  the  present  time  is  therefore  transi- 
tional —  much  more  truly  so  than  many  periods 
which  have  seemed  so  mainly  because  they  have 
been  disturbed  and  exciting.  We  are  not  yet,  it 
is  true,  an  old  society  or  a  crowded  country.  But 
—  the  frontier  is  gone.  With  the  admission  of 
Arizona  and  New  Mexico,  the  famous  Senate 
Committee  on  Territories  becomes  a  committee 
on  Alaska  alone.  We  are  in  the  situation  of  a 
man  who,  though  still  very  young,  has  neverthe- 
less reached  maturity  and  come  into  full  posses- 
sion of  his  estate ;  of  an  estate  vast,  indeed,  - 
vaster  than  that  of  any  of  his  neighbors,  —  but 
yet  of  a  vastness  no  longer  incalculable,  no  longer 

7 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

uncalculated,  and  which  is  also  appreciably  im- 
paired by  the  waste  and  extravagance  of  his  youth. 
We  face,  therefore,  the  duties  and  responsibilities 
of  maturity,  of  a  more  careful  development  and 
husbandry  of  our  great  demesne.  The  time  of 
boundless  anticipation  is  past.  We  have,  instead, 
a  sure  sense  of  strength,  but  with  it  comes  also, 
at  last,  the  sense  that  even  our  strength,  and  our 
capacity  for  growth,  have  their  limits.  There  is 
as  yet  no  real  pinch,  no  hemming  in,  no  severe 
pressure  or  congestion ;  far  from  it.  But  the  cer- 
tainty that  these  things  are  in  the  future  is  at  last 
borne  in  upon  us  by  facts  and  by  wise  warnings. 
That  is  enough,  like  the  young  man's  first  vivid 
confrontment  with  the  mere  knowledge  of  his 
limitations,  to  change  our  mood.  Were  we  asked 
if  our  characteristic  cheerfulness  and  hopefulness 
is  not  damped,  we  might  still  reply,  "  Not  a  jot, 
not  a  jot !  "  But  we  are  indisputably  taking  up, 
and  ought  to  be  taking  up,  certain  of  the  prob- 
lems of  "  old  societies  and  crowded  countries  " ; 
and  the  coming  of  these  new  problems,  these 
new  issues,  has  somewhat  changed  the  aspect  of 
certain  others  which,  even  with  us,  are  old. 

8 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

There  is  much  to  hearten  us  as  we  enter 
upon  the  new  epoch.  As  we  turn  to  the  questions, 
new  and  old,  which  now  confront  us,  we  can  feel 
that  certain  other  questions,  certain  whole  classes 
of  questions,  in  fact,  which  have  at  other  times 
sorely  tried  free  governments,  do  not  now  confront 
us  at  all.  There  are,  for  instance,  the  political 
troubles  which  have  sprung  from  differences  in 
religion  —  the  very  bitterest  in  history.  It  surely 
may  be  counted  an  immense  triumph  of  democ- 
racy that  these  have  for  us  practically  ceased  to 
exist.  And  it  is  so,  too,  with  certain  other  funda- 
mental things.  Besides  religious  freedom,  we  have 
freedom  of  speech  and  of  the  press.  Some  very 
serious  evils  have,  it  is  true,  appeared  in  the  press. 
It  is  badly  commercialized.  Its  tone  is  frequently 
very  low,  and  one  does  not,  as  a  rule,  find  it  gov- 
erned by  any  high  sense  of  responsibility.  But  it 
is  still,  as  a  whole,  an  invaluable  safeguard.  What- 
ever problems  we  have  to  face,  we  can  discuss  them 
with  very  great  freedom.  We  obey  Milton's  in- 
junction concerning  Truth  :  "  Give  her  but  room, 
and  do  not  bind  her  when  she  sleeps."  In  that 
alone  is  an  immeasurable  security  and  hope.  To 

9 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

say  that  we  are  also  free  from  the  political  troubles 
and  perplexities  that  spring  from  differences  of 
race  would  be  going  too  far.  But  I  think  we 
may  say  that  those  troubles  and  perplexities  are 
to-day  less  acute,  less  threatening,  less  hampering 
and  depressing,  than  they  have  ever  been  before. 
The  sin  and  blunder  of  slavery  is  ended  —  is  even, 
let  us  hope,  atoned  for.  The  mistake  and  wrong 
of  Reconstruction  is  undone.  Much,  very  much, 
remains  to  be  done  by  way  of  adjustment,  arrange- 
ment, education,  justice  ;  but  the  temper  in  which 
we  consider  these  things  is  vastly  improved.  I 
believe  that  most  thoughtful  men,  if  they  should 
examine  their  own  minds  concerning  this  entire 
matter,  would  confess  themselves  more  hopeful 
to-day  than  they  have  ever  been  —  more  hopeful 
than,  a  few  decades  ago,  it  seemed  possible  that 
they  would  ever  be. 

We  can,  therefore,  turn  to  our  new  issues  ex- 
ceptionally free-handed,  and  with  the  good  spirit 
that  comes  of  substantial  progress  in  free  govern- 
ment. 

The  new  issues  all  have  this  much  in  com- 
mon :  They  are  all  at  bottom  economic,  and  eco- 

10 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

nomic  in  a  very  strict  derivative  sense  of  the  word 
—  all  questions  of  national  housekeeping,  of  the 
safeguarding,  the  development,  and  the  distribu- 
tion of  our  immense  national  inheritance.  John 
Sherman  said  long  ago  that  nine  tenths  of  the 
legislation  of  peace  is  the  legislation  of  finance, 
and  if  finance  be  taken  in  its  fullest  meaning,  that 
is  truer  to-day  than  when  he  said  it.  I  am  not 
sure  that  it  has  not  also  always  been  true;  but 
the  rapid  and  revolutionary  development  of  the 
means,  and  the  swift  widening  of  the  scale,  of 
production  and  transportation — the  marvelous  ex- 
tension of  the  principle  of  combination  into  every 
branch  of  industry  and  business  —  this  change 
has  transformed  bewilderingly  the  entire  field 
with  which  economic  legislation  must  deal.  It  is 
not  merely  that  we  are  approaching  "  the  prob- 
lems of  old  societies  and  crowded  countries." 
Those  problems  have  taken  on  for  us  new  as- 
pects, aspects  hardly  known  elsewhere,  and  a 
truly  American  vastness  of  range.  We  can  and 
should  profit  by  a  close  study  of  European  and 
Asiatic  experience.  The  way  we  are  at  last  com- 
ing to  study  that  experience  is  perhaps  the  most 

II 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

convincing,  as  it  is  the  most  natural,  manifesta- 
tion of  our  changing  temper.  But  the  guidance 
we  can  get  from  the  older  countries,  however 
valuable,  is  limited.  There  are  things  we  must 
work  out  for  ourselves  —  in  which  we  must  our- 
selves be  guides  and  pioneers  ;  for  the  new  indus- 
try, the  new  ways  in  business  and  finance,  are 
much  further  advanced  with  us,  and  much  more 
firmly  established,  than  with  the  older  peoples. 
The  particular  new  issue  on  which  we  can  get 
the  most  guidance  from  Europe,  and  which  is 
therefore  the  simplest  of  all,  is  that  of  conserva- 
tion. To  call  that  issue  a  question  would  be  a 
misnomer.  It  is  not  a  question  at  all --unless 
there  is  a  question  between  economy  and  extrav- 
agance. To  state  it  should  be,  so  far  as  public 
opinion  is  concerned,  to  answer  it.  No  one,  I 
suppose,  would  have  the  hardihood  to  affirm  that 
we  ought  to  waste  our  patrimony  instead  of  hus- 
banding it,  or  that  we  ought  to  consume  those 
natural  resources  which,  like  the  forests  and  the 
soil's  energy,  are  capable  of  self-maintenance  and 
of  increase,  faster  than  they  can  be  restored.  The 
only  question  should  be  of  ways  and  means,  and 

12 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

concerning  these  it  will  be  some  time  before  we 
exhaust  the  enlightenment  to  be  got  from  Euro- 
pean experience.  The  very  recent  date  of  the 
beginnings  of  scientific  forestry  among  us  is  per- 
haps the  best  illustration  of  how  much  we  can 
learn  and  must  learn  from  that  experience —  and 
of  how  amazingly  we  have  neglected  it.  It  is 
hardly  twenty  years  since  Mr.  Pinchot  and  the 
other  pioneers  began  their  work  in  this  country ; 
but  in  Germany,  in  France,  in  Switzerland,  the 
care  and  culture  of  the  forests  have  been  a  na- 
tional concern  for  centuries.  Their  systems  were 
thorough  and  elaborate  before  ours  was  begun. 
The  German  forests  are  valued  at  half  a  billion 
dollars.  The  French  forests  yield  annually  an  aver- 
age of  two  dollars  the  acre.  Those  of  Switzerland 
are,  if  anything,  even  more  carefully  conserved 
and  cultivated.  With  us,  there  was  actually  no 
law  whatever  providing  for  forest  reservations 
until  1891.  In  the  matter  of  the  national  con- 
servation of  the  use  of  water-power,  we  have  in  the 
example  of  Switzerland  a  still  more  admirable 
—  a  practically  perfect  —  object-lesson.  There 
is  not  a  considerable  waterfall  in  the  Alps  whose 

'3 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

force  is  not  carefully  calculated.  Already  a  great 
part  of  the  light  and  heat  and  power  used  by 
the  Swiss  people  is  supplied  by  Government  from 
this  source. 

Concerning  these  things,  therefore,  there  is 
hardly  a  question ;  but  there  is  an  issue ;  there 
is  a  conflict,  a  struggle ;  and  the  violence  and 
magnitude  and  difficulty  of  it  are  greater  than 
anywhere  else  in  the  world.  That  is  so  because 
nowhere  else  in  the  world  are  private  interests 
so  well  organized  or  so  powerful,  and  nowhere 
else  have  they  had  such  opportunities  to  acquire 
control  of  the  various  means  of  wealth.  There 
is  thus  an  issue,  more  and  more  sharply  defined, 
between  the  permanent  public  weal  and  the  self- 
ishness of  individuals  and  groups.  The  mere  waste- 
fulness of  the  public  itself,  culpable  as  it  has,  of 
course,  been,  does  not  seriously  threaten  to  turn 
into  that  spoliation  by  the  people  which  Macau- 
lay  apprehended;  but  the  accumulation  of  vast 
wealth  by  a  few,  which  he  also  predicted, — that 
has  come,  and  on  a  scale  beyond  his  wildest 
dream.  There  has  also  come  a  massing  together 
of  both  great  and  little  accumulations,  and  an 


THE    NEW   POLITICS 

organization  of  capital  and  industry  under  a  few 
heads,  which  he  apparently  did  not  foresee  at  all, 
so  that  the  struggle  is  not  so  much  against  the 
appetites  and  immediate  desires  of  the  mass  of 
the  people  as  it  is  a  struggle  on  behalf  of  the 
people  against  the  combinations.  To  take  an  in- 
stance which  at  once  suggests  itself,  the  lumber 
kings  were  not  so  slow  as  the  rest  of  us  to  see 
how  rapidly  the  country  was  being  deforested. 
Mr.  Pinchot  did  not  need  to  take  violent  meas- 
ures to  arouse  them  to  the  situation.  Mr.  Pinchot, 
in  fact,  taught  them  nothing  on  the  subject. 
They  had  already  looked  ahead,  and  were  buying 
timber  lands  everywhere.  Whether  or  not  a  sim- 
ilar concerted  effort  has  been  made  to  monopolize 
the  country's  water-power  has  been  questioned ; 
but  it  can  hardly  be  questioned  that,  law  and 
usage  remaining  what  they  are,  the  same  forces 
which  have  made  for  monopoly  and  against  com- 
petition in  other  things — in  steel,  in  mineral  oil, 
in  anthracite  coal,  and  the  rest  —  will  accomplish 
this  huge  monopoly  as  well. 

The  swift  and   universal  rise  of  prices  from 
which  we  now  suffer  will  be  really  a  blessing 

15 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

if  it  shall  serve  to  awaken  us  completely  to  the 
actual  state  of  industry  and  exchange  among  us. 
Our  awakening  to  the  necessity  of  economy,  of 
conservation,  important  as  it  is  in  itself,  is  still 
but  a  part  of  the  greater  awakening  to  the  true 
extent  of  the  changes  that  have  come  about  in 
our  industrial  life;  it  is  but  a  rubbing  of  the 
eyes  to  what  we  shall  see  when  we  are  fully 
aroused.  The  field  is  so  vast  that  only  a  superfi- 
cial glance  at  the  main  features  of  the  new  order 
is  here  possible;  but  sometimes  the  swift  eye- 
sweep  will  yield  enlightenment  not  to  be  won 
by  a  minute  and  piece-meal  observation. 

The  most  striking  and  important  fact  —  a  fact 
which  is  in  a  way  inclusive  of  the  whole  mat- 
ter —  is  this  :  Competition,  as  we  have  known 
it  in  the  past,  the  kind  of  competition  on  whose 
existence  and  continuance  our  law  and  usage 
concerning  industry  and  concerning  property  are 
largely  based,  is  breaking  down.  From  many 
industries  it  has  already  practically  disappeared. 
Take  any  one  of  dozens  of  articles  of  general 
consumption,  and  thorough  investigation  will 
very  likely  disclose  that  real  and  vital  competi- 

16 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

tion  no  longer  prevails  in  its  production  or  in 
its  transportation  or  in  its  wholesale  or  even  its 
retail  distribution.  From  whomsoever  one  buys 
it,  one  is  really  patronizing  a  trust  or  other  com- 
bination. A  combination  of  manufacturers  makes 
it,  a  combination  of  common  carriers  fixes  the 
charges  for  transporting  it  to  the  market,  the 
original  combination  names  the  terms  on  which 
the  retail  dealers  may  handle  it,  —  the  main  con- 
dition frequently  being  that  they  shall  not  handle 
competing  products  at  all,  —  and  the  ultimate 
consumer  is  lucky  if  a  combination  of  the  deal- 
ers themselves  does  not  fix  the  minimum  price 
at  which  he  can  buy  it.  That  such  combinations 
of  mere  retailers  exist  in  the  great  centers,  and 
that  there  exists  also  the  control  or  ownership 
of  groups  and  chains  of  shops  by  the  manufac- 
turers themselves,  has  for  some  time  been  known. 
If  our  present  investigations  of  prices  go  deep 
enough  and  far  enough,  I  am  sure  they  will  also 
disclose  such  combinations  in  the  smaller  com- 
munities as  well.  The  dependence  of  ordinary 
shopkeepers  on  the  trusts  or  other  combinations 
which  supply  their  particular  wares  —  such,  for 

'7 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

instance,  as  that  of  the  butchers  on  the  meat 
trust  —  is  so  widespread  that  in  this  respect  the 
old  law  of  competition  has  been,  in  large  measure, 
not  merely  nullified  but  reversed.  Instead  of  in- 
dividual manufacturers  competing  for  sales  to 
individual  shopkeepers,  who  in  turn  compete 
among  themselves  for  the  consumers'  favor,  we 
have  the  shopkeepers  compelled  to  restrict  their 
business  to  the  products  of  a  group  of  manufac- 
turers and  taking  their  revenge  by  themselves 
combining  against  the  consumer.  The  consum- 
ers, in  fact,  seem  to  be  the  only  industrial  group 
which  has  so  far  failed  altogether  to  combine. 

Illustrations  are  so  abundant  that  one  hesitates 
which  to  choose.  Perhaps  the  tobacco  business, 
since  it  was  one  of  the  first  to  yield  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  combination,  will  do  as  well  as  any 
other ;  but  what  is  true  of  that  business  is  true 
of  so  many  others  that  it  is  necessary,  in  justice, 
to  emphasize  that  it  is  taken  merely  as  an  illus- 
tration—  that  nothing  invidious  is  meant  by  the 
choice. 

The  history  of  that  business  since  the  principle 
of  combination,  the  trust  principle,  was  first  ap- 

18 


THE    NEW    POLITICS 

plied  to  it,  exhibits  plainly  all  the  features  of  the 
new  order  which  have  been  mentioned,  except, 
possibly,  the  voluntary  combination  of  the  retail 
dealers  in  particular  communities.  There  was  first 
practically  unlimited  competition  among  the  man- 
ufacturers, then  the  union  of  several  companies 
in  a  corporation  stronger  than  any  of  its  rivals ; 
then  the  sort  of  competition  that  never  lasts,  and 
which  led  simply  to  successive  absorptions  of  all 
sorts  of  independent  concerns  by  the  original 
combination,  the  names  of  the  various  independ- 
ent brands  being,  however,  frequently  retained  ; 
then  the  invasion  by  the  trust  of  branches  of  the 
business  in  which  it  had  not  originally  engaged ; 
then — or  perhaps  sooner  —  the  taking  of  meas- 
ures for  the  control  of  the  retail  trade,  such  as 
the  setting-up  of  chain  stores  and  the  practical 
compelling  of  retail  dealers  to  handle  only  the 
trust's  wares.  Other  means  to  overcome  compe- 
tition were  doubtless  employed,  but  these  were 
the  chief.  And  they  have  been  so  effective  as  to 
leave  the  consumer  in  large  measure  at  the  mercy 
of  the  combination.  If  he  insists  on  buying  a 
particular  brand  of  tobacco  formerly  manufac- 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

tured  by  independents,  he  is  very  likely  to  find 
either  that  it  is  no  longer  manufactured  at  all  or 
that  it  is  now  really  manufactured  by  the  trust 
—  in  which  case  the  quality  of  the  product  has 
very  probably  been  changed.  Of  course,  some 
independent  concerns  are  still  doing  business,  and 
it  is  always  possible  to  obtain  their  wares  if  the 
consumer  prefers  them  and  is  willing  to  take  the 
trouble  to  use  the  mails.  The  monopoly  is  not 
complete.  But  in  respect  of  by  far  the  greater 
part  of  the  demand  for  tobacco  in  all  its  various 
forms,  it  has  almost  come  to  the  point  where  the 
men  in  control  of  the  bulk  of  the  business  can 
say  to  the  consumer:  "You  can  no  longer  choose 
for  yourself  what  you  will  have.  You  must  take 
what  we  supply." 

Again  let  me  repeat  that  I  have  mentioned 
this  business  merely  as  an  illustration.  Many  other 
industries  that  would  serve  equally  well  as  illus- 
trations instantly  come  to  mind.  In  fact,  what 
does  not  come  promptly  to  mind,  what  is  getting 
harder  and  harder  to  find,  is  the  industry,  the 
business,  of  which  what  is  true  of  this  one  is  not 
either  already  true  or  plainly  by  way  of  becoming 

20 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

true.  One  can  scarcely  pick  up  a  paper  without 
encountering  the  announcement  that  the  same 
principle  has  been  extended  in  some  form  to 
some  new  field.  A  combination  of  "general" 
stores  in  certain  cities,  and  a  practically  nation- 
wide combination  of  bakeries,  are  the  freshest  in- 
stances. It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  that  the  ten- 
dency is  so  universal  as  to  mean  unmistakably  a 
new  industrial  order. 

What  does  the  change  mean  for  the  individual, 
not  as  consumer,  not  as  in  any  sense  a  mere  ob- 
server or  outsider,  for  that  can  be  the  lot  only  of 
a  number  so  small  as  to  be  negligible,  but  as  a 
part  and  member,  an  industrial  unit,  of  the  new 
order,  the  new  system  ?  Clearly,  it  means,  and  it 
must  continue  to  mean  until  the  system  is  some- 
what modified  in  the  interest  of  the  individual, 
less  independence,  a  narrower  range  of  opportun- 
ity. There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  it  means, 
on  the  whole,  less  comfort  or  a  lowered  standard 
of  living.  The  contrary  is  more  probably  true. 
The  economies  in  most  of  the  combinations 
doubtless  outnumber  and  outweigh  the  losses,  not 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  producers  only, 

21 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

but  from  that  of  the  entire  community  as  well. 
Neither  does  the  change  mean  that  the  man 
of  ability  and  ambition  cannot  rise.  He  can.  A 
policy  of  promotions  for  merit  is  plainly  to  the 
interest  of  every  great  business.  The  great  com- 
binations have  almost  universally  adopted  that 
policy,  and  they  follow  it  far  more  consistently 
than  Government  does.  That  is  a  principal  rea- 
son why  they  are  so  well  served.  But  that  these 
things  are  so  does  not  rid  us  of  the  fact  that  the 
coming  of  the  new  order  has  meant  a  real  loss 
of  independence,  of  industrial  freedom,  to  the 
great  mass  of  individuals.  Their  chance  to  rise  is 
a  chance  to  rise  in  but  one  way  —  by  obedience 
to  the  laws  of  the  systems  to  which  they  belong; 
and  in  the  making  of  those  laws  they  have  had 
no  voice.  There  is  real  independence  only  at  the 
top  ;  and  to  reach  the  top  is  beyond  the  hopes  of 
any  but  a  very,  very  few.  In  this  respect  the  new 
order  is,  perhaps,  more  like  the  military  system 
than  anything  else.  Clearly,  it  is  less  democratic, 
less  in  accord  with  the  democratic  ideal,  less 
conducive  to  the  democratic  spirit  and  temper, 
than  the  old. 

22 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

But  to  get  a  fuller  conception  of  the  change, 
and  how  great  it  is,  we  must  go  higher.  We 
must  go  to  the  source  of  initiative  and  control  in 
business  as  it  has  come  to  be  carried  on  in  Amer- 
ica; that  is  to  say,  to  the  men  who  direct  the 
capital  of  the  country.  For  the  principle  of  com- 
bination has  certainly  not  withheld  itself  from 
the  sources  of  industrial  energy  any  more  than  it 
has  from  particular  industries.  Of  the  announce- 
ments of  mergers  and  combines  which  one  sees 
so  constantly,  none  are  more  significant  than 
those  concerning  banks  and  trust  companies  in 
the  great  centers.  To  these  there  have  also  of 
late  been  added  reports  from  the  West  of  the 
formation  of  chains  of  banks  in  the  smaller 
places,  covering  whole  States  or  parts  of  two  or 
three  States  —  not  the  branch  bank  arrangement 
of  England  and  Canada,  but  veritable  bank  trusts, 
controlling  the  main  supply  of  capital  for  great 
regions.  I  suppose  it  was  the  insurance  investi- 
gations of  a  few  years  ago  that  first  revealed  how 
it  has  been  possible  for  a  few  great  capitalists  to 
get  control  of  the  accumulated  savings  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  people  of  small  means. 

23 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

Those  investigations  did  not,  however,  lead  to  any 
comprehensive  plan  for  arresting  the  process.  It 
has  not  stopped,  but  gone  on.  According  to  a 
recent  estimate,  a  single  great  banking  concern  is 
charged  with  the  practical  direction  of  some  six 
billion  dollars,  variously  invested  —  in  manufac- 
tures, in  banking,  in  transportation,  in  mines,  in 
many  other  ways.  To  say  that  we  already  have 
a  dominant,  all-controlling  money  trust  would 
be  going  too  far.  But  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  the  forces  of  the  age  make  for  such  a  consum- 
mation, that,  our  law  and  usage  remaining  as 
they  are,  that  also  is  fairly  sure  to  come  about. 

The  possibility,  taken  with  the  vastness  of  our 
extent  and  our  wealth,  is  staggering.  Four  cen- 
turies ago,  the  Medici  were  masters  of  Florence 
because  they  were  supreme  there  in  finance ;  but 
Florence  at  her  best  was  but  a  city  of  perhaps  one 
hundred  thousand  inhabitants,  with  a  territory 
far  smaller  than  that  of  our  average  single  State. 
If,  therefore,  the  Medici  could  make  themselves 
so  great  a  place  in  history,  and  play  so  great  a 
part  in  the  life  of  their  time,  what  might  not 
they  do  who  should  establish  even  a  like  control 

24 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

over  the  limitless  industry,  the  incalculable  opu- 
lence, of  America?  In  the  presence  of  such  power 
how  could  democracy  survive  ?  Such  power  could 
go  far  to  corrupt  the  press.  Less  power  has,  in 
fact,  already  gone  far  to  corrupt  the  press.  Less 
power  has  already  corrupted  legislatures ;  has  sub- 
orned executives;  has  reached  even  the  courts.  But 
these  indirect  and  vile  ways  are  not  the  only  ways, 
perhaps  not  the  most  truly  effective  ways,  in 
which  such  power  would  work  to  the  undoing  of 
democracy.  When  we  shall  have  substituted  the 
new  order  for  the  old  regime  of  competition  and 
free  individual  initiative  in  all  the  great  industries, 
when  every  one  of  them  shall  be  organized  into 
a  single  system  under  a  single-headed  control,  and 
there  shall  be  set  above  them  all  the  money- 
lenders, the  financiers,  themselves  brought  into 
an  equal  solidarity,  we  shall  have  gone  far  to  de- 
prive democracy  of  the  very  air  which  it  must 
breathe  to  live.  We  shall  have  denied  to  the 
mass  of  individuals  the  use  and  practice  of  self- 
dependence,  self-direction,  the  wont  and  exercise 
and  habit  of  freedom,  without  which  they  cannot 
fit  themselves  either  to  win  it  or  preserve  it. 

25 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

Here,  I  repeat,  is  but  the  merest  glance  at  the 
new  conditions ;  the  merest  flirting  aside  of  the 
curtain.  But  it  may,  I  think,  be  sufficient  to  en- 
able us  to  formulate  the  chief  of  the  new  issues. 
We  are  confronted,  let  us  say,  with  the  problem 
of  adapting  the  democratic  principle  to  condi- 
tions that  did  not  exist  when  our  American  de- 
mocracy arose  in  the  world :  that  is  to  say,  to  a 
field  no  longer  unlimited,  to  opportunities  no 
longer  boundless,  and  to  an  industrial  order  in 
which  competition  is  no  longer  the  controlling 
principle,  an  industrial  order  which  is,  therefore, 
no  longer  democratic,  but  increasingly  oligarchi- 
cal, which  may  even  become,  in  a  way,  monarch- 
ical, dynastic.  To  save  itself  politically,  democ- 
racy must  therefore  become  aggressively  industrial; 
it  must  somehow  extend  itself  into  that  field. 
Plainly,  therefore,  "laissez-faire"  can  no  longer 
be  its  watchword.  That  was  the  watchword  of 
the  regime  of  competition.  Democracy's  task  is 
twofold ;  it  must  secure  for  the  State,  the  public, 
the  people,  some  kind  of  effective,  ultimate  con- 
trol over  the  natural  sources  of  all  wealth ;  and  it 
must  also  secure,  in  an  industrial  system  no  longer 

26 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

controlled  by  competition,  protection  and  oppor- 
tunity for  the  individual. 

That  twofold  task  and  battle  will  not  be  easy. 
Democracy,  in  fact,  has  never  faced  a  harder,  a 
more  complicated  struggle.  Ere  she  come  through 
it  victorious,  she  will  have  need  to  call  upon  the 
names  of  all  her  saints,  to  hearten  herself  with 
the  memories  of  the  deeds  of  all  her  heroes.  For 
privilege,  driven  from  the  Church,  hurled  from 
the  throne,  has  here  in  America  made  her  seat 
and  stronghold  in  the  market-place,  and  fortified 
it  with  such  a  skill  and  energy  as  were  never  be- 
fore spent  in  her  service.  We  may  hope  that  if 
it  be  taken  it  will  prove  her  last.  But  we  cannot 
feel  that  it  will  be  easily  taken;  we  cannot  even 
hope  to  take  it  by  the  methods  of  our  past  fight- 
ing against  oppression. 

That  ancient  warfare  must,  in  fact,  be  begun 
all  over  again,  and  with  new  tactics,  new  strat- 
egy. In  the  presence  of  the  overshadowing  new 
issue,  many  of  the  old  issues  will  be  altered,  re- 
shaped. The  old  struggle  over  the  tariff  will  be 
less  and  less  a  mere  matter  of  conflicting  sectional 
issues,  less  and  less  a  matter  of  contrary  economic 

27 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

theories,  more  and  more  a  part  and  phase  of  the 
great  struggle  between  democracy  and  privilege  in 
industry.  The  old  constitutional  questions,  many 
of  which  we  have  fondly  thought  forever  settled, 
will  reappear  in  new  forms,  and  many  new  ones 
will  also  arise.  Instead  of  being  at  the  end  of  the 
period  of  great  constitutional  controversies,  we 
are  at  the  beginning  of  a  new  set  of  such  contro- 
versies, deeper  and  more  difficult  than  any  that 
have  come  before.  The  rights  and  powers  both 
of  the  States  and  the  Nation  must  be  scrutinized 
afresh.  We  shall  be  lucky,  indeed,  if  we  can  stop 
with  mere  constitutional  decisions  and  adaptations 
and  changes.  Before  the  end,  we  may  well  have  to 
go  back  farther  still,  and  find  for  the  common  law 
itself,  if  not  new  principles,  at  any  rate,  new  for- 
mulas. For  I  doubt  if  we  shall  end  before  we 
have  revised  many  of  what  we  have  thought  our 
fundamental  conceptions  of  property  and  of  hu- 
man rights. 

I  doubt,  indeed,  if  democracy  alone  is  in  dan- 
ger, if  democracy  alone  is  the  sole  matter  of  the 
argument,  the  true  stake  of  the  contest.  They  that 
enlist  in  the  new  war,  though  they  begin  as  de- 

28 


THE    NEW   POLITICS 

fenders  of  democracy  only,  may  find  before  the 
end  that  they  are  in  truth  fighting  in  a  still 
holier  cause  and  can  take  their  inspiration  from 
a  still  greater  name.  Liberty,  to  save  herself  and 
all  her  immemorial  winnings,  must  come  herself 
into  the  field.  And  she  cannot  come  as  when,  in 
the  past,  she  has  come  to  lift  up  peoples  abased 
by  kingly  or  aristocratic  oppression  or  crushed  by 
armies  or  yoked  with  the  yoke  of  priestly  big- 
otry. Coming  now  to  lift  up  a  people  bowed 
down  before  the  face  of  wealth,  she  must  take  on 
a  new  aspect,  cry  new  invocations,  learn  new  ways 
of  warfare.  She  must  get  new  weapons  and  a  new 
armor.  It  may  even  be  that  she  must  wear  a 
new  face  and  form,  and  find  for  herself  some 
other  beauty  than  that  with  which,  for  so  many 
ages,  she  has  won  to  her  hard  service  the  noblest 
of  mankind. 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 


ii 

PARTIES   AND   MEN 

None  of  us  are  entirely  content  with  our  po- 
litical parties  as  they  are.  A  good  many  of  us 
hardly  ever  mention  them  except  to  abuse  them. 
But  only  one  prominent  American,  Mr.  W.  R. 
Hearst,  has  of  late  years  made  any  persistent  ef- 
fort to  get  rid  of  the  old  ones  and  substitute  new ; 
and  he  does  not  seem  to  have  had  any  great  suc- 
cess. No  one  has  seriously  proposed  that  we  try 
to  get  on  without  any  parties  whatsoever.  Parties 
of  some  sort  are  the  only  device  we  have  for 
making  our  Government  work.  We  can  deal  with 
the  issues  presented  by  the  new  politics  only 
through  parties;  through  the  old  ones  if  they  do 
not  divide  too  hopelessly  when  they  come  to  face 
those  issues ;  through  new  ones  if  they  do.  In  any 
case,  however,  we  shall  at  least  begin  with  the 
old  parties. 

I  will  repeat  the  statement  I  have  made  of 
what  seems  to  me  the  present  task  of  democracy 
in  America,  the  problem  presented  by  the  new 

3° 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

order  which  has  come  about  in  industry  and  busi- 
ness almost  simultaneously  with  the  final  coming 
of  the  Republic  into  a  sense  of  the  limitations  of 
its  material  resources.  The  present  task  and  prob- 
lem of  democracy  is  twofold :  to  secure  for  the 
State,  the  people,  some  effective  ultimate  control 
over  the  natural  sources  of  all  wealth  ;  and  to  se- 
cure, in  an  industrial  system  no  longer  controlled 
by  competition,  protection  and  opportunity  for 
the  individual. 

The  contest  now  forced  upon  us  is,  of  course, 
but  another  form  or  phase  of  the  immemorial 
struggle  with  privilege.  But  the  phase  of  that 
struggle  upon  which  we  are  now  entering  may,  I 
think,  be  not  unreasonably  considered  the  most 
important,  the  most  crucial  of  all.  And  for  this 
reason :  The  kind  of  privilege  with  which  we 
must  now  join  battle  is  the  product,  not  of  mon- 
archy or  aristocracy  or  priestcraft,  but  of  democ- 
racy itself.  It  has  grown  up  out  of  a  free  soil.  The 
new  organization  of  industry  into  great  combina- 
tions, which  has  gone  so  far  toward  crushing  out 
competition,  began  itself  in  the  freest  competi- 
tion; it  was  in  fact  accomolished  through  the 

31 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

methods  of  competition.  First  competition,  then 
absorption — that  has  been  the  process.  But  for 
the  freedom  which  our  laws  and  usage  allowed, 

—  the  free  play  they  gave  to  all  kinds  of  ability, 
the  opportunity  they  opened  to  all  kinds  of  talent, 

—  it  is  doubtful  if  these  tremendous  aggregations 
of  energy  and  wealth  and  system  could  have  been 
built  up  so  swiftly.   Certainly,  no  country  where 
the   older   forms   of  privilege  prevail   has   ever 
matched  them.   Being,  therefore,  products  of  a 
society  established  in  opposition  to  the  entire  con- 
ception of  privilege,  they  may  seem  to  prove  that 
there  is  something  in  the  very  nature  of  great  hu- 
man societies  which  makes  for  privilege  —  that 
there  is  something,  perhaps,  in  human  nature 
that  makes  for  it.  But  whatever  the  fundamental 
trouble,  the  root  of  the  evil,  may  be,  it  is  not  en- 
tirely unreasonable  to  hope  that  this  time,  since  we 
are  dealing  with  a  kind  of  privilege  native  to  de- 
mocracy itself,  we  may  eventually  get  at  it.  What 
I  mean  is  that  we  may  eventually  find  our  strug- 
gle turning  into  a  warfare  with  the  very  life  prin- 
ciple of  privilege;  that  it  may,  therefore,  prove  to 
be  the  final  war — the  last  of  the  long  series  that 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

began  either  with  the  first  raising-up  of  the  head 
of  authority  in  some  pristine  democracy  or  else 
with  the  first  glimpse  of  the  face  of  freedom  in 
some  original  despotism. 

That,  of  course,  is  a  long,  long  hope;  and  these 
are  large  and  bold  conceptions.  To  pass  from 
them  to  a  study  of  our  Democratic  and  Republi- 
can parties  of  to-day  is  rather  an  anticlimax — like 
turning  from  Burke  or  Milton  to  the  newspapers. 
But  I  know  no  other  way  to  be  practical. 

The  tendency  in  all  self-governing  or  partly  self- 
governing  societies  is  to  have  at  least  one  party 
which  is  distinctly,  at  any  rate  habitually,  the  party 
of  privilege  and  at  least  one  party  which  is  habit- 
ually opposed  to  privilege.  There  may  be  other 
parties,  advocating  special  causes.  One  or  the 
other  of  the  two  great  parties  may  from  time  to 
time  split  and  divide  on  particular  issues.  They 
may  both  from  time  to  time  fall  into  inconsist- 
encies, failing  to  adhere  to  their  essential  motives 
and  life  principles.  All  sorts  of  departures  and 
variations  occur.  But  this  remains  the  normal  di- 
vision and  alignment.  One  may  prefer,  with  Mr. 
Bryce,  to  call  one  party  the  party  of  order  and 

33 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

authority  and  the  other  the  party  of  progress.  But 
the  choice  of  words  is  not  particularly  important. 
The  general  character  of  the  division  is  fairly 
well  indicated  by  either  set  of  terms. 

I  have  elsewhere  ventured  to  argue  that  Mr. 
Bryce  and  De  Tocqueville,  and  other  foreign  ob- 
servers as  well,  have  erred  in  denying  that  the  two 
great  American  parties  have  stood,  on  the  whole, 
for  this  normal  party  division,  and  I  still  hold  that 
opinion.  But  I  admit  freely  that  none  of  our  par- 
ties has  stuck  steadfastly  to  its  proper  role.  Apart 
from  the  forces  that  ordinarily  make  against  con- 
sistency in  politics,  the  federal  form  of  our  Gov- 
ernment has  been  the  cause  of  a  long  series  of 
divisions  —  divisions  over  the  powers  of  the  States 
and  of  the  Nation  —  that  have  often  obscured  the 
more  universal  division.  Now  and  then  these  old 
questions  —  questions  of  state  rights  and  federal 
powers — reappear.  But  they  have  lost  their  heat. 
They  have  lost  much  of  their  interest.  There  is 
something  academic  about  all  the  present-day 
discussions  of  them.  I  think  it  is  clear  that  they 
now  play  a  far  less  important  part  than  they  used 
to  play  in  our  politics,  and  have  much  less  effect 

34 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

than  formerly  on  our  party  divisions.  These  may, 
therefore,  be  expected  to  follow  hereafter  more 
closely  than  they  have  hitherto  followed  the  gen- 
eral usage  of  parties  in  representative  govern- 
ments. One  will  stand  rather  more  distinctly  than 
formerly  for  order,  authority,  system,  effective- 
ness; and  that  will  be  the  party  through  which 
privilege  will  most  naturally  seek  protection  and 
extension.  The  other  will  rather  more  distinctly 
than  formerly  stand  for  democratic  aspiration,  for 
the  rights  and  the  hopes  of  the  individual,  for 
equality  of  opportunity ;  and  that  will  be  the  party 
which  on  the  whole  will  offer  the  most  antago- 
nism to  privilege. 

But  of  the  two  great  parties  now  in  existence, 
which  will  be  which? 

Until  quite  recently,  I  do  not  think  many  of 
us  would  have  hesitated  on  this  point.  Although 
the  Republican  party  began  as  the  party  of  free- 
dom, of  manhood  rights,  and  in  opposition  to  one 
of  the  worst  forms  of  privilege  that  ever  existed, 
the  institution  of  slavery,  I  think  most  of  us  would 
have  said  that  in  its  later  history  it  has  been  pretty 
distinctly  the  party  of  order  and  authority  in  this 

35 


THE    NEW    POLITICS 

country,  and  therefore  the  party  to  which  privi- 
lege would  most  naturally  look  for  favor  and 
protection.  It  has  had  that  character  for  several 
reasons.  It  has  had  a  majority  of  the  wealthy  in 
its  ranks,  and  it  has  naturally  been  more  respon- 
sive to  their  views  than  its  rival.  It  is  the  party  to 
which  people  who  have  had,  as  the  saying  is,  a 
stake  in  the  country  have  naturally  gravitated ;  and 
one  potent  reason  for  their  coming  into  it  has 
been  its  long  ascendancy,  the  long  lease  of  power 
which  the  country  granted  it  after  the  Civil  War. 
It  has  had  control  of  the  Government.  Strong, 
successful,  practical  men  have  turned  to  it  because 
it  could  do  things,  and  men  of  that  character  have 
become  its  ruling  spirits.  Great  interests  of  all 
kinds  have  attached  themselves  to  it.  As  it  gradu- 
ally committed  itself  to  the  policy  of  protection, 
those  who  profited  or  hoped  to  profit  by  that 
policy  became  inseparably  attached  to  it.  As  the 
issues  which  it  was  formed  to  meet  disappeared,  its 
character  changed.  It  became  more  and  more  the 
champion  of  the  great  interests  which  filled  its  cam- 
paign chest  and  demanded  in  return  the  legislation 
they  wanted.  A  more  thoroughly  business-like 

36 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

party  never  existed.  It  has  for  decades  commanded 
the  best  practical  ability  in  the  country.  As  our 
industrial  system  altered,  when  first  the  great  cor- 
porations were  formed,  and  then  the  trusts,  until 
from  many  fields  competition  disappeared,  noth- 
ing was  more  natural  than  that  the  men  at  the 
head  of  the  great  combinations  should  find  this 
party  sympathetic.  They  were  the  same  kind  of 
men,  not  infrequently  they  were  the  same  men, 
who  were  already  dominant  in  its  councils.  Both 
from  its  composition  and  from  its  association  with 
great  business  interests,  the  Republican  party  was 
apparently  certain  to  become  the  political  repre- 
sentative of  the  new  order;  the  representative  of 
power;  the  representative  of  wealth;  therepresent- 
ative  of  combination  as  opposed  to  competition, 
of  cooperation  and  coordination  and  system  as 
opposed  to  individualism;  the  party,  therefore, 
of  privilege  —  of  the  new  kind  of  privilege. 

Certainly,  its  rival  was  not  well  fitted  for  that 
rdle.  The  Democratic  party  had,  it  is  true,  at  a 
certain  time  in  its  history,  stood  for  a  great  special 
interest.  The  long  lease  of  power  which  it  en- 
joyed before  the  Civil  War  had  the  usual  effect 

37 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

of  power  on  a  party  of  liberal  principles.  It  grew 
more  complacent  with  things  it  had  come  into 
existence  to  oppose  and  less  fiery  for  the  ideas  it 
had  come  into  existence  to  advance.  It  became 
more  complacent  with  authority,  less  fiery  for  lib- 
erty. The  genuinely  democratic  impulse  which 
it  had  received  in  Jefferson's  time  and  again  in 
Jackson's  had  no  renewal  under  Polk  and  Pierce 
and  Buchanan.  While  it  was  in  this  state  the 
slavery  issue  came  to  dominate  all  others ;  and  both 
the  old  parties  divided  over  it.  The  Whig  party 
went  to  pieces.  Among  the  Democrats,  the  South- 
ern or  pro-slavery  faction  got  the  upper  hand  and 
kept  it  until  the  disruption  of  1 860.  Unfortunately, 
two  truly  democratic  principles,  the  principle  of 
individual  liberty  and  the  principle  of  local  self- 
government,  both  thoroughly  sound  within  reason- 
able limits,  had  been  brought,  by  the  anomalous 
fact  of  slavery  in  a  republic,  into  a  kind  of  conflict. 
The  distracted  party  held  to  the  principle  of  local 
freedom,  of  state  rights,  and  abandoned  the  prin- 
ciple of  individual  liberty,  of  the  rights  of  man. 
The  slavery  interest,  the  very  greatest  single  inter- 
est in  the  country,  for  a  time  controlled  it.  For  a 

38 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

time,  therefore,  it  may  be  said  to  have  been  the 
party  of  the  established  order,  the  party  of  privi- 
lege. 

But  for  the  last  half-century  the  Democratic 
party  has  had  very  little  of  the  power  that  corrupts 
and  demoralizes.  Neither  has  it  had  the  kind  of 
membership  that  would  make  it  complacent  with 
privilege,  nor  yet  have  the  great  material  interests 
attached  themselves  to  it.  It  has,  indeed,  from 
time  to  time  won  as  recruits  independent  men  of 
wealth ;  but  its  principal  gains  have  been  among 
the  working-people  of  the  great  cities,  particularly 
among  the  foreign-born  and  among  the  plain 
farmers  of  the  West.  The  old  slaveholding  in- 
terest of  the  South  has,  of  course,  disappeared,  and 
the  large  Southern  membership  of  the  party  has 
had,  since  the  war,  an  influence  on  its  policy  very 
different  from  that  which  the  slave  interest  exer- 
cised before  the  war.  For  the  South  has  been  poor ; 
it  has  been  relatively  weak ;  it  has  felt  itself  on  the 
defensive ;  on  the  outside  of  things  and  not  on  the 
inside.  In  the  South,  moreover,  the  plain  man,  the 
man  with  neither  wealth  nor  distinction  of  birth, 
has  been  steadily  coming  to  the  front.  The  old 

39 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

Southern  aristocracy  has  lost  its  political  ascend- 
ancy, and  the  new  industrial  oligarchy  has  been 
slower  to  develop  there  than  elsewhere.  The 
voice  of  the  South  in  that  party  has  accordingly 
been,  since  the  war,  the  race  issue  alone  apart,  de- 
cidedly against  any  kind  of  condoning  of  privi- 
lege. 

On  the  whole,  therefore,  I  think  we  may  say 
that  as  the  new  issues  began  to  force  themselves 
upon  the  country,  as  the  great  changes  in  our  in- 
dustrial system  came  about,  and  the  new  kind  of 
privilege  began  to  make  itself  felt  and  understood, 
it  was  decidedly  the  Democratic  party  to  which 
one  had  best  reason  to  look  for  opposition  to  that 
new  kind  of  privilege.  That  was  the  party  which 
seemed,  on  the  whole,  to  have  decidedly  the  best 
right  to  claim  support  as  the  party  of  individual 
liberty,  of  democracy  in  the  full  meaning  of  the 
word. 

And  that,  I  think,  has  been  its  real  bent.  For 
the  past  ten  years  its  specific  proposals  have  been, 
for  the  most  part,  unfortunate.  It  has  suffered 
also  from  bad  management,  from  bad  organiza- 
tion, from  factional  divisions.  It  has  suffered  from 

40 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

lack  of  intelligence.  As  contrasted  with  the 
business-like  control  and  direction  of  the  Repub- 
lican organization,  its  leadership  has  been  pitia- 
bly weak.  The  party  has  been  distrusted,  and  the 
people  have  refused  to  grant  it  power,  because 
they  have  felt  it  to  be  incoherent,  unbusiness-like, 
ineffective,  more  like  a  mob  than  an  army  —  but 
not  because  it  has  not  been  democratic  in  animus 
and  temper  and  composition.  For  years,  in  fact, 
it  has  wanted  only  able  and  intelligent  leader- 
ship and  firm  organization  to  commend  it  to  popu- 
lar favor.  A  majority  of  the  American  electorate 
would  many  times  have  preferred  to  support  that 
party  if  they  had  not  been  afraid  to. 

Such,  then,  was  the  general  state  of  both  parties 
when  the  new  aspect  of  industry  and  finance 
forced  itself  upon  the  attention  of  the  people  in 
a  way  to  demand  a  distinctly  political  attention. 
Then  two  things  happened  which  have  profoundly 
altered  the  party  situation.  One  was  Mr.  Roose- 
velt's promulgation  of  what  have  come  to  be 
called  the  Roosevelt  policies.  The  other  was  the 
Progressive  or  Insurgent  movement  in  the  Re- 
publican party. 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

The  two  things  were  certainly  not  unrelated. 
Which  began  first  will  doubtless  in  the  future  be 
discussed  by  historians,  but  to  determine  whether 
ex-President  Roosevelt  really  got  his  cue  from 
the  Western  Progressives  or  they  got  theirs  from 
him  is  not  of  the  first  importance.  Both  he  and 
they  had  come  to  feel  that  to  retain  the  confi- 
dence of  the  country  their  party  must  somehow 
counteract  the  impression,  already  widespread, 
that  it  was  subservient  to  great  private  and  cor- 
porate interests;  that  it  must,  therefore,  strike 
out  on  a  new  line  and  consider  more  candidly  the 
changed  conditions  of  industry.  Both  he  and  they 
had  vision  enough  to  see  that  there  was  growing 
up  and  becoming  powerful  in  this  country  a  kind 
of  discontent  somewhat  different  from  that  which 
has  produced  most  of  the  revolutions  and  politi- 
cal overturns  of  the  past;  a  discontent  not  so  much 
with  actual  as  with  relative  material  conditions, 
not  so  much  with  actual  suffering  or  poverty  as 
with  inequalities,  and  particularly  inequalities  of 
opportunity. 

The  fact  and  the  volume  of  that  discontent  in 
America  is  a  striking  and  a  creditable  thing.  Many 

42 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

of  our  people  who  are  most  dissatisfied  are  living 
fairly  comfortable  lives.  They  do  not  lack  bread 
or  shelter.  They  have  work,  and  their  earnings 
seem,  as  compared  with  the  earnings  of  the  same 
kinds  of  labor  in  other  countries,  decidedly  high. 
But  they  see  other  men  enjoying  not  merely 
greater  wealth,  but  a  kind  of  power  which  they 
themselves  cannot  hope  to  attain.  They  perceive 
that  they  are  mere  parts  of  systems,  the  control 
of  which  has  passed  to  a  few  men ;  that  these  sys- 
tems are  growing  constantly  bigger  and  absorbing 
more  and  more  of  the  industrial  energy  of  the 
country;  that  it  is,  therefore,  no  longer  reasona- 
ble, as  it  once  was,  for  every  man  of  character  and 
intelligence  and  energy  to  hope  to  make  himself 
the  independent  master  of  his  own  business,  what- 
ever it  may  be.  Instead  of  that,  they  find  all  the 
main  industries,  including  the  various  forms  of 
commerce,  tending  to  combination  and  consoli- 
dation, with  a  very  small  group  in  control,  and 
the  workers  of  all  but  the  highest  grade  or  rank 
deprived  completely  of  initiative,  and  indeed  re- 
duced to  be  mere  parts  of  a  great  machine,  value- 
less and  powerless  if  detached.  Of  course  this 

43 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

change  has  caused  some  actual  hardship.  But  the 
discontent  with  it  has  been  something  more  than  a 
mere  clamor  for  a  bigger  share  of  the  good  things 
of  life.  The  democratic  instinct,  the  instinct  and 
principle  of  individualism,  of  independence,  of 
human  rights,  has  been  at  the  bottom  of  it.  That 
instinct  has  taken  alarm,  and  the  alarm  has  spread 
through  both  the  parties.  The  reason  why  this 
feeling  has  had  more  striking  and  visible  effects  in 
the  Republican  party  than  in  the  opposition  has 
been  that  it  had  more  to  overcome  in  that  party 
than  in  the  opposition. 

Whether  we  give  the  credit  for  originality  in 
this  matter,  for  first  perceiving  the  coming  on  of 
a  new  democratic  impulse,  to  ex-President  Roose- 
velt or  to  the  Western  Progressives,  whether  we 
consider  that  he  acted  as  patriot  and  leader  and 
prophet  or  only  as  an  astute  politician,  there  can 
be  no  denying  that  his  political  instinct  was  keen 
and  correct.  But  ex- President  Roosevelt,  when  he 
went  out  of  office,  had  merely  announced  a  gen- 
eral policy  concerning  the  combinations  and  had 
done  little  more  than  that  concerning  the  conser- 
vation of  our  resources.  And  even  in  his  very 

44 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

general  announcements  of  policy  he  on  one  point 
either  differed  from  the  Western  Progressives  or 
at  least  failed  to  go  their  lengths.  He  made  no  at- 
tack on  the  system  of  high  protective  tariffs.  He 
failed,  therefore,  to  strike  at  all  at  that  particular 
bond  between  his  party  and  the  great  interests 
which  many  have  regarded  as  the  least  defensible 
of  all.  The  Western  Progressives  did  strike  at  it, 
and  it  was  that  part  of  their  programme  which, 
as  we  all  know,  brought  them  first  into  open  con- 
flict with  the  conservative  wing  of  their  party. 

That  conflict  has  now  widened  and  deepened 
into  a  positive  breach  or  schism  which  cuts  through 
the  party  everywhere  except,  perhaps,  in  the  South. 
The  division  has,  for  the  time  being,  altered  the 
face  of  American  politics,  and  it  has  upset  all  cal- 
culations and  forecasts. 

To  attempt  a  forecast  even  of  the  course  of  the 
schism  itself  would  be  venturesome.  But  either 
the  Progressives  or  the  Conservatives  will  win,  let 
us  say,  in  their  present  fight  for  control  inside  the 
lines  of  the  party  lines.  If  the  Progressives  win, 
the  party  will  be  profoundly' changed.  But  in  that 
case  the  chances  are  at  least  even  that  the  Conserv- 

45 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

atives  will  not  withdraw;  they  may  feel  that  they 
have  no  other  place  to  go ;  and  if  they  remain  in 
the  party  their  presence  will  be  enough  to  keep  it 
from  becoming  radical  —  to  keep  it  from  becom- 
ing more  than  moderately  liberal.  If,  however, 
the  Conservatives  win,  the  Progressives  are  not  so 
likely  to  acquiesce  and  remain  loyal.  On  the  con- 
trary, there  is  a  very  strong  probability  that  they 
will  secede;  that  they  will  either  attempt  a  new 
movement  and  organization  of  their  own  or  join 
with  the  present  opposition  or  some  part  of  it. 
It  is  a  question,  therefore,  whether  they  or  the 
present  Democratic  opposition  will  be  the  true 
liberal  party  of  the  future ;  but  to  that  liberal 
party  of  the  future,  whatever  form  and  name  it 
may  take,  both  the  Progressive  Republicans  and 
the  present  opposition  will  contribute  of  their 
membership ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  we  may  be 
sure  that  wherever,  in  the  new  alignment,  the 
Conservative  Republicans,  the  so-called  "Stand- 
patters," the  men  who  for  some  decades  have  been 
the  real  rulers  of  this  country — that  wherever 
these  shall  find  themselves,  there  will  be  the  party 
of  authority  and  order,  the  party  of  the  new  kind 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

of  privilege.  To  them  will  doubtless  be  joined 
many  conservative  men,  Tories  in  temperament  or 
by  conviction  or  from  the  character  of  their  per- 
sonal interests,  who  now  call  themselves  Demo- 
crats. The  composition  of  the  two  parties  of  the 
future  seems  in  fact  fairly  easy  to  predict. 

But  whether  they  will  be  two  new  parties,  with 
new  names,  or  merely  the  two  old  parties  materially 
changed  in  composition  and  much  more  sharply 
differentiated  in  policy  than  they  now  are  —  that 
depends  on  the  character  and  the  effectiveness  of 
the  leadership  of  the  immediate  future.  A  leader 
of  the  Republican  Progressives  comparable  to 
Hamilton  or  Jefferson  or  Lincoln  could  in  all 
probability  make  of  them  a  true  and  complete 
party,  so  strong  that  a  great  part  of  the  opposition 
would  in  the  long  run  be  drawn  into  its  ranks. 
The  rise  of  such  a  man  among  the  Democrats 
would,  on  the  other  hand,  probably  have  a  pre- 
cisely contrary  effect. 

There  are  people,  many  people,  who  feel  that 
the  Republican  Progressives  already  have  such  a 
man.  There  are  also  people,  though  not  so  many, 
who  would  contend  that  the  opposition  has  such 

47 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

a  man ;  and  the  claims  of  this  sort  that  are  made 
for  Bryan  are  as  sincere  as  those  that  are  made  for 
Roosevelt.  But  they  are  not  at  present  taken  so 
seriously.  It  is  said  that  Mr.  Bryan  has  been  for 
years  proclaiming  the  issues  and  advancing  the 
ideas  which  are  now  transforming  our  politics ; 
that  he  was  in  this  respect  far  in  advance  of 
Roosevelt.  This  is  measurably  true.  There  are  de- 
mands in  the  Progressive  programme,  there  are 
" planks "  in  Roosevelt's Ossawatomie  "platform," 
which  were  urged  by  Mr.  Bryan  before  the  terms 
"Progressive"  and  "Insurgent"  came  into  use, 
before  Roosevelt  became  President  and  announced 
his  policies.  But  along  with  these  things  Mr. 
Bryan  has  put  forth  other  ideas,  other  proposals, 
which  have  been  utterly  and  deservedly  rejected; 
and  he  has  supported  them  with  a  kind  of  reason- 
ing which  many  of  us  find  not  merely  shallow  and 
unconvincing,  but  culpably  sophistical.  Whatever 
sincerities  and  whatever  soundness  there  may  be  in 
him,  a  great  body  of  thoughtful  and  sober-minded 
Americans,  many  of  them  members  of  his  own 
party,  are  fixed  in  the  conviction  not  merely  that 
he  is  an  untrained  mind,  a  mind  lacking  in  judg- 

48 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

ment  as  well  as  training,  but  that  he  is  too  unsta- 
ble to  be  trusted  with  power.  It  is  hardly  con- 
ceivable that  his  prestige  and  his  hold  on  public 
opinion  will  ever  be  greater  than  they  have  been. 
They  are  now  less  than  they  have  been  ;  and  they 
seem  likely  to  continue  to  diminish. 

With  Roosevelt  it  is  different  —  very  different. 
He  still  fills  the  public  eye  as  no  other  man  of  the 
time  has  done.  Apparently,  his  going  out  of  office 
has  not  lessened  at  all  the  interest  in  his  personality 
and  his  career  or  at  all  narrowed  his  extraordinary 
access  to  public  opinion.  It  is  many  years  since  any 
American  has  had  so  great  a  fame  as  his  or  such 
obvious  and  widespread  influence.  Every  public 
utterance  he  makes  reaches  the  entire  country. 
He  can  have  an  instant  hearing  for  any  proposal, 
any  contention,  he  cares  to  put  before  the  Repub- 
lic. Moreover,  he  plainly  desires  to  continue  to 
lead.  He  seeks  to  put  himself  at  the  head  of  the 
Progressive  Republicans ;  and  all  the  signs  are  that 
the  majority  of  the  Progressive  Republicans  wish 
him  for  their  leader.  When,  therefore,  it  is  asked, 
why  he  is  not  the  man  of  the  hour,  the  man  of  the 
age,  the  man  providentially  raised  up  to  be  the 

49 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

captain  of  all  the  forces  of  democracy  in  the  war- 
fare against  the  new  kind  of  privilege,  a  convinc- 
ing answer  does  not  at  once  frame  itself. 

He  will  not  fail  to  play  that  role  from  any  lack 
of  energy  or  of  shrewdness  or  of  the  instinct  for 
affairs — the  instinct  of  leadership.  No  more  skill- 
ful politician,  in  the  full  and  not  invidious  sense  of 
that  much-abused  word,  has  ever  lived  in  this  Re- 
public, if  in  any  republic.  It  is  by  no  means  pre- 
posterous to  compare  him  with  either  Caesar  or 
Napoleon  if  one  has  in  mind  only  their  civil  and 
not  their  military  characters  and  careers.  Neither 
in  revolutionary  France  nor  in  the  overgrown 
and  decadent  Roman  Republic  could  such  a  man 
have  been  kept  down.  His  detractors  merely 
hurt  their  case  when  they  refuse  to  acknowledge 
the  uncommon  force  there  is  in  him.  In  face 
of  his  actual  performance  in  self-advancement,  it 
is  difficult  to  doubt  that  he  possesses  "  the  thews 
that  throw  the  world.'*  Perhaps  it  is  true  that 
he  has  no  particular  gift  or  power  which  can 
properly  be  called  genius;  that  he  has  won  his 
battles  solely  by  an  extraordinary  use  and  develop- 
ment of  gifts  not  extraordinary  in  themselves.  But 

50 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

that  does  not  leave  him  any  the  less  extraordinary 
in  the  actual  effect.  Such  will  and  energy  are  them- 
selves as  rare  as  genius — and  far  surer  to  prevail.  It 
is  they,  in  truth,  that  make  the  conqueror  as  we 
know  him  in  history ;  and  that  is  plainly  the  type 
to  which  Roosevelt  belongs.  His  sleepless  ambi- 
tion and  ever-growing  egoism  are  entirely  in 
keeping  with  it.  The  frail  body  disciplined  to 
robust  strength  and  hardihood,  the  student  and 
idealist  turned  into  the  ultra-practical  man  of  af- 
fairs, the  halting  speaker  and  writer  become  a  mo- 
nopolist of  public  utterance,  the  appetite  for  action 
and  for  power,  once  aroused,  growing  ever  with 
what  it  feeds  on,  until  it  is  become  insatiable  — 
what  is  all  this  but  the  normal  course  and  develop- 
ment of  the  character  that  all  through  history  has 
belonged  to  the  setters-up  of  dynasties,  the  regene- 
rators or  overthrowers  of  kingdoms,  the  founders 
or  the  subverters  of  republics  ? 

Fairness  will  concede  extraordinary  attraction 
as  well  as  extraordinary  force.  There  have  been  ad- 
mirable, even  noble,  impulses,  the  gift  of  com- 
radeship; zest  in  human  relationships,  and  love  of 
nature,  and  joy  in  life;  integrity  in  private  deal- 

51 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

ings,  and  continence,  and  domestic  virtues.  There 
has  been,  of  course,  courage  always,  and  an  in- 
spiring sense  of  opportunity  and  of  the  range  and 
possibilities  of  life.  There  has  been  a  ceaseless  in- 
tellectual activity,  never,  it  is  true,  particularly  fine 
or  original,  but  keen  and  quick  and  wide  of  reach, 
playing  over  the  entire  field  of  human  interests.  It 
is  a  personality  that  can  win  as  well  as  overcome. 

Yet  I  cannot  feel,  and  I  do  not  believe  that  many 
dispassionate  and  painstaking  observers  of  this 
career  can  feel,  that  here  is  the  right  leader  of  our 
American  democracy  in  its  present  crisis.  Many, 
on  the  contrary,  are  coming  to  feel  that  in  precisely 
such  a  man  there  may  be  more  immediate  danger 
to  the  American  democratic  ideal  than  even  in 
those  new  industrial  forces  against  which  his 
leadership  is  invoked.  It  is  becoming  a  common- 
place that  those  forces  and  our  present  industrial 
conditions  were  not  contemplated  when  our  system 
was  founded ;  that  the  fathers  did  not  foresee  them 
and  could  not,  therefore,  set  up  safeguards  against 
them.  But  the  fathers  were  not  without  fore- 
thought of  the  danger  of  the  coming  of  such  a  man 
as  is  now  risen  up  among  us — a  man  too  popular, 

52 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

too  powerful,  and  too  ambitious.  It  is  clear  from 
their  debates  that  they  had  in  mind  both  the  mis- 
adventures and  the  preventive  usage  of  the  ancient 
and  mediaeval  republics,  in  every  one  of  which 
there  dwelt  a  constant  terror  of  the  man  too  long 
in  power  and  in  the  public  eye,  the  man  with  too 
great  a  following,  the  man  too  preeminent  above 
his  fellows.  It  was  of  the  essence  of  the  spirit  of  the 
ancient  republics,  as  it  was  of  the  spirit  of  repub- 
lican Florence,  not  to  expect  to  find  the  virtue  and 
forbearance  of  their  great  men  equal  to  their 
strength,  and  to  refuse,  therefore,  to  risk  the  safety 
of  the  State  upon  the  doubtful  hazard  of  the  con- 
flict of  ambition  and  patriotism  in  any  human 
breast.  Our  own  founders  limited  the  term  for 
which  a  President  could  be  elected  to  four  years, 
and  they  also  undoubtedly  intended  the  device  of 
an  electoral  college  to  operate  as  a  check  upon 
popular  impulse.  That  device  failed.  But  when 
Washington  retired  at  the  end  of  his  second  term 
his  example  was  quickly  seized  upon  and  con- 
verted into  a  precedent  —  a  precedent  which  has 
hitherto  proved  strong  enough  to  keep  any  of  his 
successors  from  serving  longer  than  he  did. 

53 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

That  precedent  has  undoubtedly  had  great 
weight  with  the  electorate,  but  it  has  also  had  the 
effect  of  an  admonition  and  an  appeal  to  Wash- 
ington's successors  themselves ;  and  to  not  one  of 
these  has  it  ever  appealed  so  logically  as  it  does 
today  to  Theodore  Roosevelt.  All  that  I  have  said 
and  all  that  can  be  said,  in  praise  of  his  character 
and  his  achievement,  merely  makes  it  so  much  the 
more  applicable  to  his  case.  For  the  kind  of  dan- 
ger contemplated  in  the  apprehension  which  has 
made  that  precedent  so  effective  could  not  come 
from  a  weak  man,  but  only  from  a  strong  man ; 
it  could  not  come  from  an  unpopular  man  or  a 
man  generally  distrusted,  but  only  from  a  man 
grown  too  popular,  a  man  trusted  too  widely  and 
too  slavishly.  Of  course,  too,  the  man  to  be  feared 
must  be  ambitious,  and  that  Roosevelt  has  from 
first  to  last  been  keenly  ambitious  even  his  ad- 
mirers do  not  deny.  He  has  proved  himself  not 
merely  ambitious,  but  of  an  imperious  and  arro- 
gant impatience  with  whatever  hinders  or  stays 
him,  whether  it  comes  from  men  or  from  laws. 
With  men  he  has  again  and  again  displayed,  now 
a  tyrannous  and  coarse  violence,  now  an  indirec- 

54 


THE  NEW   POLITICS 

tion  and  sharp  practice,  which  simply  cannot  be 
condoned.  However  one  considers  such  things  as 
his  dealings  with  Quay  and  Platt  and  Harriman, 
or  his  brutal  fury  with  his  critics  of  the  press  and 
with  Judge  Parker  and  other  political  rivals,  or 
his  entire  behavior  concerning  campaign  contri- 
butions in  1904,  or  the  bullying  and  unfairness 
with  which  he  has  repeatedly  met  opposition,  one's 
republican  instincts  and  one's  instincts  as  a  gentle- 
man are  equally  outraged.  With  laws  he  has  been 
even  more  high-handed  than  with  men.  From 
first  to  last  he  has  been  egregiously  lacking  in 
that  scrupulous  and  reverent  sense  of  law,  of  prec- 
edents, of  institutions,  which  has  been  hitherto 
the  rule  of  both  American  and  English  statesman- 
ship, and  none  of  his  public  utterances  shows  the 
lack  of  that  sense  more  glaringly  than  his  recent 
setting  forth  of  the  "  New  Nationalism."  Of  all 
his  predecessors  in  the  White  House  only  Andrew 
Jackson  can  be  compared  to  him  in  this  respect. 
And  Jackson,  demoralizing  as  his  "reign"  was, 
never  was  half  so  really  dangerous.  For  Jackson 
had  no  such  consuming  ambition,  no  such  sweep- 
ing designs  of  change;  and  when  he  came  into 

55 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

national  power  he  was  already  elderly  and  infirm. 
Should  Roosevelt  again  take  the  first  place  in  the 
Republic,  no  one  would  expect  to  see  him  con- 
duct himself  as  an  ordinary  President  in  time  of 
peace.  His  power  would  be  greater  than  Jackson's 
at  its  height ;  and  there  is  every  reason  to  believe 
and  none  to  doubt  that  he  would  wield  it  with  a 
worse  than  Jacksonian  disregard  of  legal  and  con- 
stitutional limitations. 

One  may  have  the  firmest  faith  in  our  system 
and  still  shrink  from  submitting  it  to  such  a  strain. 
No  doubt,  Lord  Morley's  observation  in  "  Com- 
promise" is  sound:  a  reasonably  healthy  state  has 
immense  strength ;  it  has  abundant  reserves  of  vi- 
tality to  throw  off  disease  and  recover  from  shocks 
and  confusions  and  derangements  of  its  order.  But 
every  departure  from  its  right  order,  every  lapse 
from  its  essential  principles,  leaves  it  more  open 
to  the  next.  I  do  not  believe  that  Roosevelt,  I 
do  not  believe  that  Napoleon  or  Caesar,  could 
in  a  day  or  a  generation  subvert  the  institutions 
of  this  country;  but  not  for  that  reason  ought 
a  Napoleon  or  a  Caesar  to  be  welcomed;  and  not 
for  that  reason  should  any  intelligent  Ameri- 

56 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

can  disregard  the  danger  that  there  is  in  Roose- 
velt. 

Clearly,  unmistakably,  the  precedent  we  have 
made  from  Washington's  example  is  apposite, 
applicable.  The  warning  of  it  comes  home.  It 
warns  us  against  him.  But  may  we  not  hope  that 
also,  since  he  also  is  an  American,  since  we  need 
not  believe  that  he  does  not  really  love  his  coun- 
try, it  will  in  time,  and  potently,  warn  him  against 
himself?  That  he  will  yet,  and  in  time,  take  to 
heart  some  of  the  words  forever  on  his  lips,  and 
read  aright  the  lives  he  has  so  often  commended 
to  us  —  Timoleon's,  Hampden's,  Washington's, 
Lincoln's  ?  That  he  will  learn  at  last  the  supreme 
nobleness,  rise  to  the  supreme  opportunity,  of 
self-abnegation?  That  the  ideals  of  youth  will 
yet  revive  in  him  and  conquer  the  coarser 
impulses  of  manhood?  That  he  will  yet,  and  in 
time,  — 

"  Curb  the  liberal  hand,  subservient  proudly  "  ? 

By  no  conceivable  self-assertion  could  he  now 
render  to  his  country  such  a  service  as  it  is  open  to 
him  to  render  by  crucifying  his  own  ambition; 
and  in  no  other  way  could  he  make  his  own  fame 

57 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

so  secure.  Nor  would  the  act  cut  him  off  from 
such  service,  such  leadership,  as  would  in  truth  be 
most  truly  valuable  to  the  country  and  most  hon- 
orable to  him.  Let  him  once  pledge  himself  in 
plain  words  never  again  to  seek  or  to  take  the  pres- 
idency, and  his  power  to  advance  causes,  his  hold 
on  public  opinion,  his  opportunity  to  contribute 
what  he  has  to  contribute  to  the  solution  of  the 
new  problems,  would  not  be  less,  but  greater.  If, 
however,  he  will  not  do  that,  his  leadership,  so  far 
from  helping  us  with  our  new  perplexities,  will 
merely  complicate  them  with  the  old  problem 
and  danger  which  from  time  to  time  has  beset 
every  experiment  in  republican  government  — 
the  problem  and  danger  of  "  the  man  on  horse- 
back." 

We  shall  proceed  better,  because  more  safely, 
more  in  accord  with  the  spirit  of  our  own  and  the 
English  law  and  usage  and  institutions,  with  less 
risk  of  either  destroying  what  we  have  or  estab- 
lishing what  we  shall  have  to  destroy,  if  we  go  on 
without  recourse  to  anything  at  all  in  the  nature 
of  a  dictatorship.  Our  emergency  is  not  of  the 
character  that  demands  such  a  remedy ;  nor  could 


THE   NEW   POLITICS 

such  a  remedy  work  us  any  lasting  good.  Our  need 
is  of  a  permanent  adjustment  to  conditions  likely 
to  endure;  of  laws  thoroughly  considered  and 
carefully  framed;  of  deep-reaching  changes  in 
our  social  habit  and  usage  —  such  changes  as  can 
only  be  brought  about  slowly,  with  a  wise  pa- 
tience. For  work  like  that  such  a  temper  as 
Roosevelt's  would  be  almost  the  worst  conceiv- 
able. That  of  his  successor,  though  less  inspiring, 
is  far  better.  But  it  is  doubtful  if  any  one  man's 
leadership  will  bring  us  far  upon  our  road.  For 
the  long  and  hard  enterprise  now  before  democ- 
racy in  this  country  the  best  abilities  of  many 
men  will  be  needed,  and  those  abilities  will  need 
the  best  training  to  be  got  from  schools  and  col- 
leges and  from  life  and  experience.  There  must 
be  an  extraordinary  cooperation,  a  difficult  and 
unprecedented  bending  of  countless  energies,  in 
many  fields,  to  the  same  general  and  impersonal 
ends.  Ordinary  popular  leadership  will  not  suf- 
fice; from  the  one-man  power  in  whatever  form, 
from  masterful  and  swift  determinations  of  what- 
ever kind,  we  have  little  to  hope.  American  poli- 
tics are  become  a  hard  occupation.  The  Republic 

59 


THE    NEW   POLITICS 

has  never  before  demanded  a  more  serious  and 
patient  attention  to  its  affairs,  or  from  so  many 
men.  For,  whatever  the  changes  that  shall  in  the 
end  make  our  system  valid  and  firm  against  the  new 
conditions,  they  must  extend  through  the  whole 
of  it,  in  all  its  federal  vastness.  The  test  to  which 
our  public  opinion  and  our  great  electorate  are 
thus  submitted  is  no  less  than  this:  that  there 
must  be  a  widespread,  an  intelligent,  and  a  stub- 
born patriotism. 

The  demand  of  the  Republic  for  many  men 
who  shall  be  not  merely  patriotic,  but  of  a  high 
intelligence  and  highly  trained,  who  shall  com- 
bine common  honesty  with  shrewdness  and  in- 
sight, is  indeed  severe.  And  for  the  difficult  serv- 
ice demanded  the  reward  may  not  be  high.  It 
may  well  be  martyrdom  instead  of  gratitude;  to 
be  misunderstood  rather  than  to  be  honored ;  to 
be  used  and  then  cast  aside. 

But  the  immemorial  promptings  to  nobleness 
abide.  It  is,  after  all,  service  and  not  self-seeking 
which  oftenest  in  the  end  prevails.  Though  many 
men  who  seek  only  their  own  advancement  or 
their  own  profit  in  this  country's  affairs  win  to 

60 


THE   NEW    POLITICS 

their  goals  and  have  their  low  desire,  they  and  their 
works  pass  swiftly. 

"  In  the  unscarred  heaven  they  leave  no  wake." 

They  who,  on  the  other  hand,  give  themselves 
sincerely  to  the  common  service  —  and  they,  too, 
are  many,  for  it  is  not  for  nothing  that  we  have 
been  so  long  a  free  people  in  a  favored  land — will 
find  that  what  they  have  wrought  will  stand;  that 
it  has  been  as  if  some  gracious  and  tutelary  power 
guided  their  hands  to  noble  and  enduring  work- 
manship. They  will  find  —  as  good  men  always 
find  in  the  end  —  that  they  have  builded  better 
than  they  knew. 
1910. 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 


PROPHETIC    VOICES    ABOUT 
AMERICA 

TH  E  tone  and  spirit  of  American  writing  about 
America  is  much  better  than  it  used  to  be. 
As  our  foreign  critics  have  ceased  to  be  supercili- 
ous, we  ourselves,  it  would  seem,  have  ceased  to  be 
vainglorious.  Here  beside  me  are  some  half-dozen 
volumes  of  essays,  lectures,  and  studies,  all  by 
Americans,  all  about  the  Republic,  all  fresh  from 
the  press.1  In  not  one  of  them  does  the  Eagle 
scream.  Not  one  of  the  writers  even  claims  that 
our  great  experiment  of  democracy  is  yet  proved 
successful.  None  of  them,  it  is  true,  are  really  pessi- 
mistic. A  note  of  discouragement  here  and  there  is 
the  worst  one  finds.  But  all  acknowledge  frankly 
the  disappointments  in  our  past,  all  face  candidly 

1  Yale  Lectures  on  the  '«  Responsibilities  of  Citizenship  ":  The  Citi' 
zen's  Part  in  Government,  by  Elihu  Root;  Four  Aspects  of  Civic  Duty, 
by  William  Howard  Taft;  True  and  False  Democracy,  by  Nicholas 
Murray  Butler;  Standards  of  Public  Morality,  by  Arthur  Twining  Had- 
ley;  American  Legislatures  and  Legislative  Methods,  by  PaulS.  Reinsch; 
The  Spirit  of  the  American  Government,  by  J.  Allen  Smith;  The  Indus- 
trial Republic :  a  Study  of  the  America  of  Ten  Tears  Hence,  by  Upton 
Sinclair. 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

the  perplexities  of  our  present;  only  one  claims 
with  confidence  to  have  penetrated  the  clouds  that 
shut  out  the  future. 

The  writers  are  for  the  most  part  men  entitled 
to  a  respectful  attention.  One  is  of  the  small  group 
from  which,  in  all  human  probability,  we  shall 
choose  the  next  President.  Another,  his  colleague 
in  the  Cabinet,  many  of  us  would  pronounce  the 
best  mind  in  the  Government,  if  not  in  our  entire 
public  life.  Of  the  two,  Secretary  Root  shows,  I 
think,  much  the  better  literary  instinct.  Consid- 
ered merely  as  serious  prose  about  great  topics, 
his  addresses  invite  comparison  with  the  writings 
of  English  rather  than  American  public  men,  of 
whom  so  very  few  make  a  good  appearance  in 
print.  Now  and  then,  there  is  a  kind  of  quiet 
depth  of  meaning  in  his  sentences  that  actually  re- 
minds one  a  little  of  Lincoln.  Secretary  Taft  has 
not  such  a  gift;  but  he  achieves  a  detachment,  an 
air  of  thoughtful,  disinterested  concern  about  pub- 
lic affairs,  as  of  an  honest,  well-bred  gentleman, 
which  one  too  often  misses  in  the  utterances  of 
even  our  highest  public  officials. 

Two  presidents  and  two  professors  of  universi- 

66 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

ties  maintain  the  usual  large  proportion  of  aca- 
demic contribution  to  this  as  to  all  other  topics 
about  which  books  can  be  written.  As  it  happens, 
both  Secretary  Taft  and  Secretary  Root  have  taken 
occasion  to  point  out  the  limitations  of  the  aca- 
demic point  of  view  concerning  affairs.  Accord- 
ing to  the  former,  it  has  too  great  "  certainty  and 
severity";  and  Secretary  Root,  while  setting  the 
highest  value  on  the  public  schools  as  opening  the 
door  to  opportunity  and  service,  admits  a  doubt 
"whether  the  higher  academic  education  contrib- 
utes much  to  capacity  for  political  usefulness.'* 
But  the  presidents  of  our  greater  unversities  be- 
come perforce  men  of  affairs,  however  academic 
their  ideals  and  training  may  be.  President  Butler 
seems  in  far  greater  danger  of  error  from  oratori- 
cal fervor  and  rhetorical  facility  than  from  any 
timid  preciseness  of  scholarship.  President  Hadley 
has  more  of  the  academic  quality  in  his  style,  and 
what  may  be  a  bit  of  New  England  acerbity  as 
well ;  but  his  point  of  view  is  almost  irreverently 
practical,  common-sense,  contemporaneous.  And 
even  to  the  mere  professor,  the  mere  scholar,  how- 
ever we  may  bow  and  smile  him  out  of  court  when 

67 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

he  begins  to  philosophize,  we  must  concede  a  cer- 
tain competency  for  investigations  of  facts,  such 
as  Professor  Reinsch  has  made  in  his  study  of 
American  legislatures,  and  such  as  constitutes  the 
main  part  of  Professor  Smith's  study  of  the  Con- 
stitution. 

The  last  writer  of  our  group,  Mr.  Upton  Sin- 
clair, is  a  socialist ;  he  is  also,  it  must  be  confessed,  a 
decidedly  sensational  novelist.  But  in  the  company 
of  two  statesmen  and  four  academic  dignitaries  we 
may  venture,  perhaps,  to  let  him  also  say  his  say. 

It  is  but  just,  indeed,  that  he  or  some  other 
socialist  should  have  a  word;  for  hardly  one  of  the 
others  is  content  to  leave  socialism  entirely  alone. 
So  much,  at  least,  the  socialist  propaganda  has  ac- 
complished ;  conservative  publicists,  however  they 
may  reprobate  it,  do  not  treat  it  as  negligible.  Nor 
is  their  reprobation  so  strongly  tinctured  as  it  once 
was  with  contempt.  Secretary  Taft  is,  it  is  true, 
contemptuous  of  the  mere  "parlor  socialist,"  for 
whom,  in  fact,  he  reserves  his  most  scornful  word ; 
but  he  will  not  deny  sympathy  to  the  socialistic 
impulse  of  men  who  have  really  suffered  under 
our  present  economic  arrangements.  President 

68 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

Butler  concedes  to  the  propaganda  both  sincerity 
and  ability,  and  is  content  with  the  refutation, 
effective  perhaps,  but  rather  worn,  that  socialism 
is  an  illogical  attempt  "  to  overcome  man's  indi- 
vidual imperfections  by  adding  them  together." 
Secretary  Root  ends  a  remarkable  sentence,  de- 
scriptive of  the  dangers  which  beset  on  either  side 
the  true  course  of  popular  government,  by  con- 
trasting "  the  dreams  of  Utopia,  to  be  realized  by 
changing  everything,"  with  "  the  reverence  for  the 
past  that  is  horrified  by  changing  anything  "  ;  and 
later  on,  summing  up  the  grounds  of  hopefulness, 
he  takes  comfort  in  the  diminishing  proportion 
of  avowed  socialists  in  the  American  labor  unions. 
On  the  whole,  what  is  most  striking  in  nearly 
all  these  animadversions  on  the  Republic  is  the 
entirely  serious  way  in  which  the  writers  address 
themselves,  not  perhaps  to  socialism  itself,  but  to 
that  aspect  of  American  life  which  is  most  pro- 
vocative of  socialistic  remonstrance.  Were  a  so- 
cialist to  read  them  all  together,  as  I  have  done,  he 
might  well  be  tempted  to  quote  them  Kipling  :  - 

"  Nor  call  too  loud  on  Freedom, 
To  cloak  your  weariness." 

69 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

For  all  have  much  to  say  of  liberty.  But  it  is  a  far 
cry  from  the  kind  of  defense  of  liberty  which  they 
offer  to  the  old  defiances  of  kings  and  aristocra- 
cies with  which  we  Americans  began.  Here  is  not 
a  word,  in  fact,  concerning  tyranny  of  the  old- 
fashioned  sort.  On  the  contrary,  here  is  more  than 
one  vigorous  assertion  of  the  utter  distinction,  the 
contrast  and  incompatibility,  indeed,  between  lib- 
erty and  equality.  Secretary  Root's  declaration 
has  been  celebrated  journalistically  as  extraor- 
dinary and  as  courageous.  "After  many  years  of 
struggle  for  the  right  of  equality,"  he  remarks, 
"there  is  some  reason  to  think  that  mankind  is 
now  entering  upon  a  struggle  for  the  right  of  in- 
equality." The  phrasing  is  uncommonly  good, 
but  the  contention  is  far  from  extraordinary: 
the  commitment  would  hardly  seem  bold  if  the 
speaker  were  not  a  public  man  and  an  office- 
holder. On  the  contrary,  this  is  the  main  thesis 
of  President  Butler  in  more  than  one  of  his  pa- 
pers, and  he  keeps  iterating  it  as  if  he  were  dis- 
content because  he  cannot  find  words  violent 
enough  to  arouse  us  all  to  its  axiomatic  truth  and 
its  vital  importance.  Clearness  on  this  point,  he 

70 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

urges,  is  the  essential  distinction  between  a  true 
and  a  false  conception  of  democracy.  "  We  must 
put  behind  us  the  fundamental  fallacy  that  equal- 
ity is  demanded  by  justice.  The  contrary  is  the 
case.  Justice  demands  inequality  as  a  condition 
of  liberty  and  as  a  means  of  rewarding  each  ac- 
cording to  his  merits  and  deserts.'*  And  again : 
"The  corner-stone  of  democracy  is  natural  in- 
equality, its  ideal  the  selection  of  the  most  fit." 
The  thought  tempts  to  epigrammatic  over- 
emphasis in  the  statement;  and  no  doubt  we 
Americans  have  often  fallen  into  a  slipshod  neg- 
lect of  such  distinctions  among  ideals  which,  not 
long  ago,  we  were  disposed  to  consider  peculiarly 
our  own.  To  emphasize  this  particular  distinction, 
even  to  over-emphasize  it,  may  be  a  good  way  to 
get  rid  of  whatever  there  may  still  be  left  in  us  of 
the  old  hazy  bigotry.  But  are  we  not  again  be- 
fooling ourselves  if  we  fancy  the  distinction  a  dis- 
covery, or  if  we  try  to  make  it  broader  and  harder 
and  faster  than  in  truth  it  is  ?  President  Butler,  for 
instance,  takes  too  little  pains  to  point  out  that 
the  equality  he  is  contemning  is  equality  of  eco- 
nomic condition,  not  of  privilege.  He  does  not 

7* 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

pause  long  enough  to  consider  fully  the  claim  that 
the  denial  of  equality  of  industrial  opportunity 
may  utterly  defeat  that  very  ideal  of  liberty  which 
he  holds  up  to  us  as  the  essential  and  the  summum 
bonum  of  democracy.  On  this  point,  his  oratorical 
approach  to  the  problem  leaves  him  —  and  even 
Secretary  Root  may  be  a  little  open  to  the  same 
criticism  —  decidedly  at  a  disadvantage  as  com- 
pared with  the  least  distinguished  of  our  group. 
Professor  Smith's  deliberate  account  of  the 
founding  of  our  government,  mainly  a  searching- 
out  of  the  old  intrenchments  of  privilege  in  the 
Constitution,  has  led  him  on  to  a  more  care- 
ful qualification  of  his  statements.  The  American 
doctrine  of  liberty,  he  points  out,  had  its  origin  in 
economic  conditions  quite  unlike  those  of  to-day. 
It  was  in  fact  based  on  the  assumption  of  equality 
of  economic  opportunity;  and  under  the  old  in- 
dustrial system  of  apprenticeship  and  private  ini- 
tiative, before  the  days  of  machinery  and  cor- 
porations, a  practical  equality  of  opportunity  did 
in  fact  exist.  If,  therefore,  as  socialists  claim,  and 
as  we  all  know  to  be  in  great  measure  true,  the 
coming-in  of  machinery  and  the  concentration 

72 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

of  capital  in  a  few  hands  have  destroyed  equality 
of  industrial  opportunity,  the  principle  of  liberty 
would  seem  to  be  in  need  of  a  new  application. 

And  Professor  Smith  thus  works  his  way  to 
what  seems  the  most  valuable  generalization  I 
have  found  in  any  of  these  writers.  When  the 
masses  were  economically  independent  and  sub- 
stantially equal,  he  argues,  the  aristocracy,  the 
powerful  few,  —  dominant  politically  in  America 
as  everywhere  else  at  the  time  of  our  beginnings, 
—  could  maintain  their  place  and  power  only  by 
keeping  hold  of  political  privilege  and  making 
the  State  all-powerful.  The  doctrine  of  "laissez 
faire "  was,  accordingly,  the  right  creed  of  the 
masses  at  that  time,  —  the  time,  that  is  to  say,  of 
Rousseau  and  Adam  Smith  and  Thomas  Jeffer- 
son. They  did  not  need  the  help  of  the  State  to 
protect  themselves  economically ;  on  the  contrary, 
they  had  good  reason  to  fear  that  the  State,  con- 
sidered as  a  merely  political  machine,  over  which 
they  had  little  control,  might  be  used  by  the  aris- 
tocracy to  deprive  them  of  their  economic  inde- 
pendence. To-day,  the  situation  is  reversed.  With 
the  gradual  attainment  of  universal  suffrage  the 

73 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

people  have  got  control  of  the  State ;  but  mean- 
while they  have  been  losing  control  of  the  means 
and  appliances  of  industry,  they  have  been  losing 
their  economic  independence.  The  parties  to  the 
old  controversy  have  accordingly  changed  sides. 
It  is  the  wealthy  and  privileged  few  who  now  cry, 
"  Laissez  faire !  "  It  is  the  unprivileged  many  who 
desire  more  and  more  governmental  interference 
with  industry.  What  was  once  the  radical  plat- 
form is  become  the  conservative,  and  what  was 
once  the  conservative  is  become  the  radical. 

It  is  a  generalization  which  I  think  many  sin- 
cerely liberal  minds,  opposed  to  privilege,  but  con- 
firmed in  the  habit  of  associating  privilege  with 
the  entire  theory  of  a  strong  and  paternal  govern- 
ment, may  come  to  welcome.  It  is  firmer  ground, 
one  feels,  than  the  footing  of  Secretary  Taft  when, 
before  an  audience  of  Yale  undergraduates,  he  tries 
to  explain  how  experience  has  modified  the  rigid- 
ity of  the  laissez-faire  notions  which  he  imbibed 
when  he  himself  was  a  Yale  undergraduate  and  his 
father  a  member  of  the  Cabinet.  "  I  think  these 
principles,"  the  Secretary  explains,  "are  still  or- 
thodox and  still  sound,  if  only  the  application  of 

74 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

them  is  not  carried  to  such  an  extreme  as  really  to 
interfere  with  the  public  welfare."  The  longer 
one  looks  at  the  explanation,  the  more  clearly  one 
perceives  that  laissez-faire  doctrines  are  true  pre- 
cisely so  far  as  they  are  true,  —  and  the  more 
strongly  one  is  reminded  of  the  classical  advice  of 
the  Honorable  Preserved  Doe,  in  the  "  Biglow 
Papers,"  — 

"  A  ginooine  statesman  should  be  on  his  guard, 
Ef  he  must  hev  beliefs,  nut  to  b'lieve  'em  tu  hard." 

One  can't  help  wondering  if  Professor  William 
Graham  Sumner  was  in  that  audience;  for  it  seems 
probable  that  Secretary  Taft  had  in  mind  not  so 
much  the  newer  questions  of  government  control 
of  the  great  corporations  as  a  very  old  question, 
over  which  the  battle  of  laissez  faire  has  been 
fought  many  times  before.  When  the  issue  is  on 
the  tariff,  it  is  still  the  unfavored  many  who  pos- 
sess that  war-cry,  still  the  favored  few  who  im- 
portune Government  for  help.  Two  years  ago, 
Secretary  Taft  spoke  in  a  way  to  indicate  that  he 
held  clear  views  about  protectionism,  and  did  not 
fear  to  express  them.  That  he  should  now,  both  in 
this  little  book  and  in  more  recent  utterances,  give 

75 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

forth  an  uncertain  sound  on  that  issue,  must  prove 
a  grave  disappointment  to  many  who  have  ac- 
counted themselves  his  well-wishers,  to  all  who 
have  been  led  to  regard  him  as  of  the  school  of 
courage  and  candor  in  public  life. 

And  here,  too,  if  I  mistake  not,  lies  the  plainest 
falling-short  of  the  present  administration  in  the 
eyes  of  its  more  disinterested  supporters.  Six  years 
ago,  President  McKinley,  "regular"  Republican 
though  he  was,  and  while  parties  could  demand 
regularity  far  more  imperiously  than  they  can  to- 
day, said  at  Buffalo,  in  his  last  public  speech,  "The 
period  of  exclusiveness  is  past.  The  expansion  of 
our  trade  and  commerce  is  the  pressing  problem. 
Commercial  wars  are  unprofitable.  A  policy  of 
good  will  and  kindly  trade  relations  will  prevent 
reprisals.  Reciprocity  treaties  are  in  harmony  with 
the  times,  measures  of  retaliation  are  not." 

Theodore  Roosevelt,  who  entered  public  life 
a  tariff  reformer,  and  who  so  long  remained,  and 
measurably  still  remains,  the  hope  of  independent 
and  manly  men  inside  and  outside  his  party,  sol- 
emnly promised,  while  McKinley  lay  unburied,  to 
endeavor  to  carry  out  his  policies.  For  six  years  we 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

have  waited  in  vain  for  President  Roosevelt  to 
affirm  or  to  controvert  the  last  and  on  the  whole 
the  most  important  announcement  of  policy  Presi- 
dent McKinley  ever  made.  He  has  never  moved 
in  that  matter,  nor  has  he  ever  explained  why  he 
does  not  move.  And  now,  as  his  administration  ap- 
proaches its  end,  the  man  whom  he  would  have  us 
take  for  his  successor  will  go  no  further  than  to  de- 
clare for  tariff  re  vision  —  after  the  election  !  That, 
of  course,  means,  after  the  election  of  a  Republi- 
can President  and  Congress.  It  means,  therefore, 
revision  by  a  House  of  Representatives  under  the 
control  of  Speaker  Cannon,  and  a  Senate  under 
the  guidance  of  Senator  Aldrich.  Will  the  Amer- 
ican people  be  content  to  vote  upon  the  issue  in 
that  form  ? 

Mid-ocean  should  be  a  good  place  for  broad  and 
placid  views  of  human  affairs,  and  I  happen  to  be 
writing  at  sea.  But  it  happens  also  that  I  find  on 
board  ship  an  illustration  of  the  actual  working  of 
our  present  tariff  laws  which  well-nigh  counter- 
acts the  sea's  great  soothing.  Down  in  the  hold 
are  several  thousand  tons  of  American  steel  billets. 
They  will  be  sold  in  England  cheaper  than  they 

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PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

can  be  bought  in  America.  Nor  is  this  an  excep- 
tional incident ;  such  cargoes  are  the  rule.  The  last 
time  we  discussed  the  tariff,  protectionists  did  not 
predict  and  did  not  defend  this  process  of  "  dump- 
ing." Since  then,  writers  like  Mr.  Edward  Stan- 
wood  have,  I  believe,  accepted  it  as  an  outcome  of 
extreme  protectionism,  and  defended  it  as  a  relief 
to  an  occasionally  glutted  home  market.  But  has 
anyone  ever  defended  such  juggling  with  the  laws 
of  trade  as  a  regular  practice?  Certain  it  is  that  the 
American  electorate  has  never  approved  it.  Prob- 
ably the  mass  of  voters  do  not  yet  understand  that 
our  protected  manufacturers  are  actually  making 
a  profit  on  goods  sold  in  England  cheaper  than  at 
home,  and  in  competition  for  the  home  market  of 
those  very  foreigners  against  whom  we  are  taxed 
to  protect  them.  The  voters  have  not,  in  fact,  had 
a  chance  to  consider  at  all  this  new  phase  of  our 
tariff  policy. 

For  that,  however,  we  cannot  blame  the  party 
in  power.  The  opposition  has  had  all  along,  of 
course,  the  right  to  bring  the  question  before  the 
people,  and  every  general  election  for  the  past  ten 
years  or  more  has  presented  an  opportunity.  But 

78 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

this  weapon  of  attack  has  lain  unused  in  the  Demo- 
cratic arsenal.  Meanwhile  Mr.  Bryan  (not  to  be 
outdone,  are  we  to  suppose,  in  astuteness  by  the 
other  side  ?)  proposes  to  make  government  owner- 
ship of  the  railways  the  issue — but  also,  after  the 
election !  The  tariff  is  again,  as  it  would  have  been 
in  1900  or  in  1904,  but  even  more  plainly,  the 
best  fighting  ground  of  the  opposition.  It  is  to  be 
remembered  that,  as  a  matter  of  simple  fact,  they 
have  never  lost  when  they  have  forced  and  kept 
that  issue  before  the  people.  But  the  opposition, 
apparently,  has  no  memory.  Failing  a  new  leader- 
ship, which  must  mean  a  new  leader,  Democratic 
stupidity  bids  fair,  once  again,  to  equal  or  surpass 
the  measure  of  Republican  culpability. 

Does  this  heat  seem  political  —  even  partisan? 
But  so  much  is  pertinent,  I  think,  to  the  line  of 
discussion  which  all  these  writers  follow.  For  all 
turn,  in  some  fashion,  to  the  endless  theme  of  privi- 
lege, to  the  still  unsolved  problem  of  economic 
justice  as  an  ideal  of  the  state.  With  nearly  all,  this 
is  the  main  theme — and  in  what  sincere  and  dis- 
interested writing  about  affairs  is  it  not  the  main 
theme  ?  I  think,  as  I  have  said,  that  it  is  superficial, 

79 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

almost  archaic,  to  write  as  if  the  last  word  were  said 
about  democracy  when  one  has  set  liberty  over 
against  equality.  But  neither  is  that  eagerness  wis- 
dom which,  rushing  to  attack  the  newer  positions 
of  privilege,  such  as  are  challenged  in  our  more 
recent  legislation  for  the  hampering  of  trusts  by 
fuller  control  of  railroads  and  other  means  of  trans- 
portation, raises  the  siege  of  an  older  stronghold. 
Essentially  the  same  power  and  process  which 
manipulate  railroads  to  the  ends  of  monopoly — 
a  concentration  of  the  selfishness  of  wealth — piled 
up,  and  to  the  same  end,  that  extraordinary  tariff 
wall  which  now,  while  it  shuts  out  the  foreign 
producer,  lest  he  lower  prices  among  us,  leaves  our 
own  manufacturers  free  to  serve  free- trade  Eng- 
land far  more  cheaply  than  they  will  serve  their 
countrymen  at  home. 

But  it  is  well,  of  course,  to  take  account  broadly 
of  all  the  aspects  of  privilege  in  the  Republic,  to 
consider  candidly  all  theadvantages  which  wealth, 
by  an  utterly  unexampled  facility  in  aggregation 
and  combination,  has  contrived  to  win.  Wealth  is 
not,  it  is  true,  the  only  form  of  privilege  in  Amer- 
ica. There  is  the  privilege  of  race,  to  go  no  further ; 

80 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

but  none  of  our  writers  is  dealing  with  the  case  of 
the  negro,  the  red  man,  the  Asiatic.  Moreover, 
the  problems  of  that  class,  although  vastly  mo- 
mentous and  unspeakably  difficult,  are  yet  of  a 
range  something  less  than  universal ;  they  are  also, 
I  am  persuaded,  of  an  at  least  relatively  diminished 
and  diminishing  importance.  The  struggle  for 
ideals,  for  justice,  is  in  the  main  and  usually  either 
a  fight  with  overweening  wealth  or  a  leashing 
and  beating-back  from  anarchy  of  the  discontents 
and  envies  that  spring  from  real  or  comparative 
poverty.  Of  course,  therefore,  the  struggle  in 
America  is  but  part  of  a  universal  contention,  and 
is  distinct  and  peculiar  only  by  reason  of  our  dem- 
ocratic and  federal  form,  and  whatever  else  there 
is  in  our  life  to  set  us  apart  from  other  modern 
peoples. 

Perhaps  it  should  be  accounted  one  of  the  pe- 
culiarities of  our  case  that  wealth  cannot  here,  as 
in  older  countries,  grace  and  ingratiate  itself  with 
claims  of  blood,  with  high  traditions  of  conduct, 
with  the  records  and  memorials  of  historic  sacri- 
fices and  heroisms.  If  we  must  admit  that  there  is 
nowhere  else  so  great  a  mass  of  wealth,  so  easily 

81 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

combined,  to  be  reckoned  with,  at  any  rate  it  must 
also  be  said  that  nowhere  else  does  wealth  thrust 
itself  so  crudely  before  the  vision.  Nowhere  else 
does  so  little  of  sentiment  or  reverence  help  to 
fight  its  battles.  Nowhere  else  is  its  predaceous- 
ness  so  plainly  greed. 

The  consideration  is  not  negligible.  England  is 
to-day,  as  we  all  know,  in  many  respects  quite  as 
democratic  as  America  ;  but  whereas,  even  before 
our  independence  was  achieved,  and  even  in  aris- 
tocratic Virginia,  Jefferson  could  strike  down  the 
entire  system  of  entails,  it  survives  to  this  day  in 
the  mother  country.  Because  the  English  people 
hold  in  real  honor  the  great  families  whose  names 
are  forever  associated  with  noble  passages  in  their 
history,  the  greater  part  of  the  land  of  England 
cannot  be  bought,  but  passes  on,  generation  after 
generation,  from  eldest  son  to  eldest  son,  no  mat- 
ter how  improvident  its  possessors.  That  the  sys- 
tem works  a  continuing  hardship  to  farmers  whom 
it  prevents  from  becoming  landowners  is  patent. 
That  we  have  been  so  long  exempt  from  it  is  a 
true  instance  of  our  exceptional  free-handedness 
in  the  struggle  for  that  reasonable  equality  of  op- 

82 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

portunity  which  I  think  we  must  account  essential 
to  the  attainment  of  the  substance  of  liberty. 

Why,  then,  has  wealth  so  great  weight  and 
power  in  our  system  ?  Taking  it  for  granted,  of 
course,  that  greed  will  in  America  forever  play 
upon  whatever  weaknesses  of  universal  human  na- 
ture it  elsewhere  suborns,  what,  if  any,  are  the 
more  peculiar  means  which  it  may  here  make  use 
of?  In  what  concrete  ways  does  it  successfully 
combat  our  American  ideals  of  liberty  and  inde- 
pendence, fair  play,  justice?  To  be  more  specific, 
what  is  the  fault  or  weakness  in  this  our  American 
plan  of  government  ?  Is  it  possible  to  strike  one's 
finger  on  the  spot?  Or  is  the  sickness  general, 
spreading  throughout  all  our  veins  and  members  ? 

This,  it  would  seem,  must  be,  of  necessity,  the 
main  present  inquiry  about  the  Republic.  It  is 
true,  as  one  of  our  writers  is  at  much  pains  to  show, 
that  we  began  by  deliberately  granting  to  privilege 
what  was  thought  a  firm  footing  in  our  funda- 
mental law,  national  and  state;  that  our  founders, 
for  the  most  part,  held  this  to  be  wisdom,  and  the 
only  way  to  insure  us  stability.  But  their  theory  is 
long  since  abandoned,  and  the  particular  fortifica- 

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PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

tions  of  privilege  which  they  erected — such  as 
property  qualifications  for  the  suffrage  and  for  of- 
fice—  are  nearly  all  long  since  swept  away.  Such 
dominance  as  wealth  has  now  in  our  system 
may  be  regarded  as  a  new  kind  of  dominance, 
and  exercised  by  a  new  kind — or  degree — of 
wealth. 

Where,  then,  is  the  breach  ?  Nothing  is  more  in- 
teresting, in  the  comparison  of  our  several  writers* 
views,  than  the  almost  unanimity  of  their  answers 
to  this  question,  so  far  as  they  definitely  consider 
it.  The  Executive  in  our  system  has,  they  seem 
to  agree,  justified  all  the  reasonable  hopes  of  the 
founders.  In  State  and  Nation  alike,  the  Chief 
Executive  is,  as  a  rule,  a  fairly  true  representative 
of  the  people's  interests,  at  any  rate  of  the  people's 
will.  The  old  fears  that  he  would  turn  usurper, 
and  suborn  courts  and  legislatures  to  his  ambition, 
have  proved  quite  mistaken.  Now  and  then  a  Gov- 
ernor, less  often  a  President  (Andrew  Jackson  is  al- 
most the  sole  instance),  has  been,  for  a  little  while, 
successfully  imperious.  But  the  Executive  Depart- 
ment has  not  in  the  long  run  gained  in  power  at 
the  expense  of  the  others.  On  the  contrary,  it  has 

84 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

had  much  ado  to  hold  its  own.  Quite  as  rare  are 
the  instances  of  proved  corruption  or  faithless- 
ness. Nor  have  the  courts  either  unduly  enlarged 
their  function  or  betrayed  their  trust.  It  is  with 
the  legislatures  that  fault  is  found. 

It  is  the  legislatures,  and  particularly  the  na- 
tional Congress,  which  have  proved  most  rapacious 
of  power  and  shown  the  strongest  disposition  to 
encroach  upon  the  powers  of  other  departments. 
"  Ever  since  the  Civil  War/'  President  Butler  de- 
clares, "  Congress  has  steadily  invaded  the  province 
of  the  President."  It  has  likewise,  as  he  and  Presi- 
dent Hadley  point  out,  thrust  itself  into  the  prov- 
ince of  the  courts;  but  in  the  nature  of  things  this 
invasion  could  not  go  so  far  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Executive. 

Secretary  Taft  puts  it  with  his  habitual  mild- 
ness. So  far  from  the  Executive's  usurping  legis- 
lative functions,  "the  tendency,"  he  remarks,  "is 
exactly  the  other  way.  The  danger  that  the  Ex- 
ecutive will  ever  exceed  his  authority  is  much  less 
than  the  danger  that  the  legislature  will  exceed  its 
jurisdiction."  And  he  points  out  that,  since  the 
legislature  holds  the  purse-strings,  the  President  is 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

always  "  a  petitioner  at  the  door  of  Congress  for 
the  means  to  carry  on  the  Government." 

President  Hadley  is  not  given  to  mildness,  par- 
ticularly with  legislatures.  "The  legislature,"  he 
says, "  not  only  fails  of  its  primary  purpose  in  mak- 
ing the  right  kind  of  laws,  but  perverts  its  sec- 
ondary purpose  by  exercising  the  wrong  kind  of 
checks  upon  the  Administration.  A  representative 
can  exact  a  price  for  his  support  of  the  Adminis- 
tration in  a  matter  of  public  interest,  and  the  more 
the  public  interest  is  concerned  in  the  passage  of 
the  measure,  the  higher  the  price  he  can  charge." 
And  both  he  and  Professor  Reinsch  dwell  upon  the 
tendency  of  all  our  legislatures  to  multiply  laws 
on  every  subject  that  can  be  thought  within  their 
jurisdiction;  a  tendency  which  has  forced  the 
courts,  although  at  first  inclined  to  be  timid,  to  a 
freer  and  freer  exercise  of  their  right  to  pronounce 
statutes  unconstitutional,  and  which  has  led  the 
States  to  impose,  by  constitutional  conventions, 
countless  new  limitations  upon  the  activity  of 
their  lawmakers. 

President  Butler  goes  back  to  Madison  for  a 
rather  cautious  prediction  of  what  has  happened. 

86 


.PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

He  would  have  done  better  to  take  this  striking 
prophecy  of  Gouverneur  Morris,  in  a  letter  to  a 
correspondent  who  asked  a  question  about  the 
Constitution :  — 

That  instrument  was  written  by  the  fingers  which  write 
this  letter.  Having  rejected  redundant  and  equivocal 
terms,  I  believed  it  to  be  as  clear  as  our  language  would 
permit;  excepting,  nevertheless,  a  part  of  what  relates 
to  the  judiciary.  But,  after  all,  what  does  it  signify  that 
men  should  have  a  written  Constitution,  containing  un- 
equivocal provisions  and  limitations  ?  The  legislative  lion 
will  not  be  entangled  in  the  meshes  of  a  logical  net.  The 
legislature  will  always  make  the  power  which  it  wishes 
to  exercise,  unless  it  be  so  organized  as  to  contain  within 
itself  the  sufficient  check.  Attempts  to  restrain  it  from 
outrage,  by  other  means,  will  only  render  it  more  out- 
rageous. Having  sworn  to  exercise  the  powers  granted, 
according  to  their  true  intent  and  meaning,  they  will, 
when  they  feel  a  desire  to  go  farther,  avoid  the  shame 
if  not  the  guilt  of  perjury,  by  swearing  the  true  intent 
and  meaning  to  be,  according  to  their  comprehension, 
that  which  suits  their  purpose.1 

And  it  is  the  legislatures  which  have  proved 
most  pliable  to  the  demands  of  privilege,  of  wealth. 
On  this  point  there  is  no  dissent.  "  It  is  to  the  com- 
mittee rooms  and  the  floors  of  the  legislatures,'* 

1  Gouverneur  Morris  to  Timothy  Pickering.  Sparks's  Life  of  Gou- 
verneur Morris,  vol.  in,  p.  3  2  3 .  I  am  indebted  to  two  friends,  Mr.  T.  H. 
Clark  and  Mr.  W.  C.  Ford,  of  the  Library  of  Congress,  for  this  quotation. 

87 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

President  Butler  declares,  "  that  private  interests 
go  for  help  or  protection.  There  responsibility 
is  so  divided,  there  secrecy  is  so  easy,  that  meas- 
ures demanded  by  the  people  are  done  to  death, 
despite  the  urging  of  national  and  state  Execu- 
tives. As  matters  stand  to-day,  States  and  syndi- 
cates have  Senators,  districts  and  local  interests 
have  Representatives,  but  the  whole  people  of  the 
United  States  have  only  the  President  to  speak  for 
them,  and  to  do  their  will."  Secretary  Taft  is  again 
the  mildest.  All  he  will  say  is,  "I  do  not  mean  to 
deny  that  at  times  private  and  special  interests  do, 
in  fact,  exercise  an  influence  to  the  extent  of  de- 
feating needed  legislation."  But  he  agrees  with 
the  others  that  the  chief  reason  for  this,  as  for  the 
general  failure  of  the  legislatures  to  be  rightly  rep- 
resentative, lies  in  the  control  which  particular 
States  and  other  electoral  districts  exercise  over 
members.  "  Particularism  "  is,  I  suppose,  our  only 
word  for  this  phenomenon.  Professor  Reinsch 
lays  much  stress  upon  it,  but  President  Hadley  has 
given  it  the  most  attention  and  goes  at  the  great- 
est length  into  the  analysis  of  it  and  the  setting- 
forth  of  its  consequences. 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

The  upshot  of  his  analysis  is  that,  with  com- 
paratively rare  exceptions,  the  old  theory  that 
every  legislator  represents  the  whole  country  or  the 
whole  State,  as  the  case  may  be,  is  practically 
abandoned.  The  theory  now  would  seem  to  be  that 
it  is  enough  if  each  merely  looks  after  the  inter- 
ests of  his  own  district.  Nowhere  in  the  legisla- 
tures is  there  clearly  placed  any  responsibility  for 
the  welfare  of  the  entire  body  politic,  and  no- 
where (since  we  have  not  the  English  device  of  a 
responsible  cabinet)  is  the  responsibility  clearly 
placed  for  the  entire  body  of  legislation  enacted  by  a 
particular  Congress  or  general  assembly  of  a  State. 

By  two  steps,  President  Hadley  reaches  the 
practical  outcome.  "  If  a  man  is  chosen  President 
to  govern  the  country  as  a  whole,  and  if  a  number 
of  men  are  sent  to  Congress  to  see  that  the  coun- 
try is  not  governed  as  a  whole,  but  with  a  view  to 
the  interests  of  the  separate  parts,  there  is  a  per- 
petual threat  of  a  deadlock."  That  means,  accord- 
ing to  the  writer's  conviction, — which  is  not, 
however,  fully  announced  in  this  book, —  the  fail- 
ure of  representative  government.  The  second 
step  is  logical,  if  surprising.  "But  the  country 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

must  be  governed,  and  somebody  must  be  found 
to  do  it.  The  President  may  not  do  it.  That 
stands  in  the  Constitution.  Congress  may  not. 
That  also  stands  in  the  Constitution.  The  only 
man  left  to  do  it  under  present  conditions  is  the 
party  boss.  If  a  man  gets  the  power  to  control 
nominations  both  for  the  executive  and  the  legis- 
lature, he  can  furnish  government  of  the  kind  he 
wants,  either  good  or  bad." 

Here,  no  doubt,  is  an  instance  of  the  academi- 
cal too  great  "certainty  and  severity"  of  reason- 
ing about  affairs.  An  overstrained  major  premise 
is  made  to  yield  an  inference  at  once  too  broad 
and  too  precise.  In  practice,  the  instinct  of  com- 
promise is  far  too  strong,  and  compromise  too  po- 
tent a  resource,  to  permit  of  anything  like  a  con- 
stant and  complete  deadlock  between  legislature 
and  executive.  Both  yield  much,  and  together 
they  so  often  contrive,  without  other  help,  to  carry 
on  the  government,  that  the  boss  is  neither  omni- 
present nor,  when  he  exists,  omnipotent.  Never- 
theless, one  does  recognize  the  physiognomy  thus 
so  candidly  traced  as  a  kind  of  composite  portrait 
of  representative  government  in  America. 

90 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

We  shall  not  easily  agree  upon  any  statement 
of  the  extent  of  the  evil.  Sincere  men  will  vary 
all  the  way  from  Secretary  Taft's  mere  acknowl- 
edgment that  there  is  something  the  matter  to  the 
journalese  of  Mr.  Lincoln  Steffens, — "govern- 
ment of  the  people,  by  the  rascals,  for  the  rich." 
But  the  evil  stands  confessed,  proved,  explained, 
— and  few  of  us  would  deny  that  it  is  of  great 
enough  proportions  to  make  us  all  ashamed. 

Naturally,  it  is  the  Socialist  of  our  group  who 
is  disposed  to  make  the  most  of  it.  It  is  difficult,  in 
fact,  to  imagine  how  he  could  make  any  more  of 
it  than  he  does.  "The  process  culminated,"  he 
tells  us,  "  at  the  beginning  of  the  present  decade, 
when  '  big  business  '  was  in  practically  undisputed 
possession  of  both  the  major  parties,  of  Congress 
and  the  presidency,  and  of  the  governments  in  every 
town,  city,  and  State  in  America." 

I  think  that  we  should  not  take  Mr.  Sinclair  as 
a  fair  representative  of  the  socialist  thought  of  our 
time.  Certainly,  he  does  not  appear  to  good  ad- 
vantage in  comparison  with  the  writers  with  whom 
I  am  here  associating  him.  When  we  turn  from 
almost  any  one  of  them  to  him,  his  rhetoric  seems 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

cheap,  and  much  of  his  reasoning  irritatingly  ad 
captandum.  Irritating  also  is  his  loose,  irresponsi- 
ble handling  of  matters  of  fact,  his  positive  asser- 
tion of  things  quite  incapable  of  proof,  —  as  when 
he  states  that  Roosevelt  got  a  second  term  in  1 904 
only  by  the  death  of  Senator  Hanna,  —  and  such 
outbursts  of  undisciplined  feeling  as  his  heaping  of 
rather  vulgar  epithets  upon  the  German  Emperor. 
But  his  book  may  perhaps  serve  at  least  to  indi- 
cate the  socialistic  view  of  the  most  recent  phases 
of  our  political  and  economic  life. 

His  main  contention  is  that  practically  all  the 
ills  which  we  now  endure  as  a  community  —  not 
the  political  ills  only  but  the  economic  and  the 
social  as  well  —  are  the  outcome,  and  the  per- 
fectly logical  outcome,  of  the  regime  of  competi- 
tion, under  which  a  few  private  individuals  have 
at  last  gained  possession  of  all  the  means  of  pro- 
duction. The  subversion  of  government  is  but  one 
phase  of  the  racking  and  squeezing  which  society 
must  continue  to  endure  so  long  as  capital,  omnip- 
otent, shall  continue  to  demand  profits. 

This,  of  course,  is  not  new.  Nor  is  there  any- 
thing new  in  his  remedy  —  the  extinction  of  pri- 

92 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

vate  ownership  of  capital  and  the  taking-over  by 
the  community  of  all  the  machinery  and  other 
appliances  of  industry.  Nor  yet  does  it  seem  a  new 
thing  to  be  told  that  we  are  come  to  a  crisis,  and 
that  the  "  revolution  "  is  at  hand.  It  provokes  a 
kind  of  smile,  indeed,  to  remember  how  many 
times  society  has  been  told  that  it  was  passing 
through  a  "transitional  stage,"  how  constantly 
"  the  present  crisis  "  has  been  discovered.  And  not 
by  socialists  only ;  it  would  almost  seem  that  men 
cannot  write  earnestly,  with  feeling,  about  soci- 
ety, without  discovering  a  crisis.  But  Mr.  Sinclair 
contrives  to  give  some  novelty  to  his  contention. 
One  of  his  chief  devices  is  a  curious  parallel  be- 
tween the  present "  present  crisis  "  and  that  other 
crisis  of  the  fifties  out  of  which  came  the  revolu- 
tion that  overthrew  slavery ;  and  his  journalistic  in- 
stinct is  keen  enough  to  furnish  forth  the  parallel 
with  incidents  which  make  it  readable.  The  rev- 
olution is  to  come  within  a  year  after  the  presi- 
dential election  of  1912.  (The  author  admitted 
that  it  might  come  this  past  summer,  —  the  book 
was  written  in  the  spring, --but  he  is  entitled  to 
the  credit  of  having  clearly  preferred  the  later 

93 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

date.)  To  Secretary  Taft,  as  President  from  1908 
to  1912,  President  Buchanan's  role  of  "the  last 
figurehead  "  is  assigned,  while  the  parts  of  other 
leading  actors  in  the  earlier  crisis  —  Webster, 
Clay,  Sumner,  John  Brown,  and  the  rest — go  to 
various  living  celebrities  ranging  in  quality  from 
former  President  Cleveland  to  Mr.  Jack  London. 
Lincoln,  we  may  be  sure,  is  not  neglected.  He 
will  find  his  counterpart  as  an  emancipator  in  Mr. 
W.  R.  Hearst,  of  the  New  York  "Journal  "  and 
various  other  newspapers.1  Even  the  method  and 
process  of  the  revolution  are  quite  frankly  revealed ; 
Mr.  Sinclair  is  not  a  secret  conspirator,  but,  as  he 
announces  in  his  preface,  "  a  scientist  and  a  pro- 
phet." 

If  one  were  compelled,  with  no  prompting  of 
personal  grievance,  to  choose  between  this  and 
even  the  most  conservative,  the  most  placid  view 

1  Whose  modesty,  let  us  trust,  has  not  led  him  to  forbid  the  editors 
of  those  papers  to  make  mention  of  this  tribute  to  their  owner.  It  is  to 
be  hoped  also  that,  while  not  failing  to  mention  with  approval  the  volume 
which  contains  this  illuminating  comparison,  Mr.  Hearst's  papers  have 
pointed  out  that  it  is  Mr.  Sinclair's  novel,  Tbejungle,  —  not  The  In- 
dustrial Republic,  —  which,  as  Mr.  Sinclair  himself  informs  us,  has  been 
compared  to  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.  These  are  points  on  which,  after  the 
revolution,  school  children  ought  not  to  be  misled. 

94 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

of  the  Republic  to  be  found  in  any  of  these  writers, 
it  is  hard  to  see  how  one  could  hesitate.  Such 
hurried  reasoning,  so  suffused  with  feeling,  can 
only  prevail,  one  would  think,  with  minds  already 
filled  with  such  a  wish  for  change  as  will  readily 
father  the  thought  of  revolution.  But  there  are 
quieter  socialists  than  Mr.  Sinclair,  who  make 
their  way  by  more  careful  steps  to  revolutionary 
views  of  society ;  and  there  are  men  with  no  bent 
whatever  toward  socialism  who  feel  much  as  he 
does  about  the  competitive  system  in  its  present 
phase  and  its  effects  in  our  American  life. 

All  the  writers  of  our  group,  indeed,  go  so  far 
as  to  admit  that  we  must  deal  henceforth  with 
conditions  and  with  forces  which  our  founders 
did  not  and  could  not  contemplate;  that  our  sys- 
tem must  therefore,  if  it  is  to  endure,  withstand  a 
new  kind  of  strain,  perhaps  discharge  new  func- 
tions. "  Our  political  system  has  proved  successful 
under  simple  conditions,'*  says  Secretary  Root. 
"It  still  remains  to  be  seen  how  it  will  stand  the 
strain  of  the  vast  complication  of  life  upon  which 
we  are  now  entering." 

Does  the  admission  mean  that  we  must  intro- 

95 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

duce  into  it  any  new  principle  or  principles  ?  that 
Lowell  was  wrong,  and  really  begged  the  ques- 
tion, when  he  said  that  the  Republic  will  survive 
so  long  as  it  shall  adhere  to  the  principles  of  the 
founders  ?  That  is  the  drift  of  much  writing  and 
speaking  nowadays.  It  is  one  form,  apparently,  of 
the  reaction  which  takes  place  in  many  minds 
when  they  find  they  must  give  over  the  comfort- 
able assumption  that  all  the  great  constitutional 
questions  are  settled,  that  no  problem  of  free  gov- 
ernment can  prove  really  troublesome  to  people 
who  have  already  attained  civil  and  religious  lib- 
erty, the  ballot,  the  public  school. 

It  is  not,  however,  the  view  of  Secretary  Root, 
who  of  all  the  conservatives  of  our  group  makes 
the  most  systematic  attempt  at  a  forecast  of  the 
future.  On  the  contrary,  he  is  clear  that  we  shall 
need  no  new  principles  whatever,  but  only  "  the 
adaptation  of  the  same  old  principles  of  law  with 
which  our  fathers  were  familiar/'  True,  the  Sec- 
retary confesses  that  he  regards  optimism  as  the 
plain  duty  of  every  citizen  and  pessimism  as  "  crim- 
inal weakness  " ;  but  his  quiet  recital  of  what  he 
considers  favorable  signs  for  the  future  of  free 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

government  in  America  is  quite  without  the  ob- 
jectionable quality  one  finds  in  Mr.  Sinclair's 
prophesying. 

Secretary  Root  looks  to  tendency,  rather  than 
achievement ;  and  he  is  hopeful,  not  because  he 
finds  our  public  life  as  it  should  be,  but  because  he 
does  find  it — undeniably  lamentable  as  are  some 
of  its  aspects — measurably  better  than  it  has  been. 
He  enumerates  our  gains.  We  have  vastly  im- 
proved our  civil  service;  the  several  extensions 
of  the  merit  system  have  deprived  the  spoilsmen, 
the  office-brokers,  of  the  greater  part  of  their 
stock-in-trade.  We  have  won  for  both  life  and 
property  far  greater  security  than  they  had  at 
the  time  of  our  beginnings.  We  manage  our  be- 
nevolent institutions  better  and  better.  We  have 
raised  the  standard  for  nearly  all  elective  officials ; 
an  Aaron  Burr,  for  instance,  could  hardly  be 
chosen  nowadays  to  the  vice-presidency.  We  have 
been  so  far  successful  in  the  long  fight  against 
corruption  that  the  scandals  of  President  Grant's 
time  —  the  Credit  Mobilier  fraud,  the  peculations 
of  Belknap,  Secretary  of  War,  the  Whiskey  Ring, 
the  Tweed  Ring  —  have  to-day  no  counterparts. 

97 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

We  have  gradually  developed  a  public  opinion 
which  would  utterly  condemn  practices  that  were 
quite  common  a  century  ago,  such  as  the  use  of 
lotteries  to  secure  money  for  seminaries  of  learn- 
ing. We  have  begun  to  mulct  railroads  for  grant- 
ing rebates  to  favored  shippers,  and  to  prosecute 
great  capitalists  for  manipulating  railroad  and 
other  corporations  to  their  own  interests,  —  of- 
fenses which  long  went  unpunished.  We  have 
similarly  begun  to  take  account  of  the  thefts  of 
our  public  lands.  We  have  done  much,  by  the 
Australian  ballot  and  other  measures  of  reform, 
to  prevent  corrupt  practices  at  elections. 

These  gains  are  real  and  substantial ;  this  there 
is  no  denying.  But  are  they  enough  ?  Are  they 
enough  to  offset  the  positive  reasons  for  discon- 
tent enumerated  by  Mr.  Sinclair  and  by  abler 
writers  ?  Are  they  enough,  if  we  adhere  to  Secre- 
tary Root's  own  point  of  view,  and  consider  only 
tendency,  direction,  to  offset  such  a  list  as  might 
be  made  of  the  respects  in  which  we  have  lost 
rather  than  gained  ? 

For  we  must  observe  that  Mr.  Root  says  noth- 
ing of  that.  He  does  not  strike  a  balance,  or  show 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

us  the  other  side  of  the  picture.  Yet  he  would 
hardly  deny  that  something  discouraging  may  be 
said  on  this  very  point  of  tendency,  of  direction, 
which  he  emphasizes.  Socialists  may  be  wrong 
when  they  tell  us  the  poor  have  been  growing 
poorer,  but  they  are  not  wrong  when  they  tell  us 
that  the  rich  are  growing  richer.  Neither  are 
those  writers  wrong,  on  the  other  hand,  who  point 
out  that  the  new  organization  of  industry  into  pro- 
digious trusts,  real  as  may  be  its  economies,  tends 
to  stifle  the  enterprise  of  individuals  and  to  deprive 
us  altogether  of  a  certain  noble  and  loving  quality 
in  work,  as  precious  to  the  workman  as  it  is  in- 
valuable and  inimitable  in  his  product.  Nor  are 
they  entirely  wrong  who  find  in  the  labor  unions 
a  well-nigh  equal  tendency  to  destroy  the  pre- 
mium which  an  elder  regime  put  upon  the  in- 
dustry and  the  competence  of  the  individual  la- 
borer. Nor  yet  are  they  wrong  who  hold  that 
these  tendencies  away  from  excellence  in  in- 
dustry work  their  way  also  into  the  life  of  the 
State. 

It  is  a  question  of  gains  and  losses,  therefore; 
not  of  gains  alone.  We  cannot  reckon  upon  any 

99 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

saving  inertia  in  the  Republic  which  will  always 
incline  it  toward  justice  and  righteousness,  save  as 
the  wicked  and  selfish  among  us  may  divert  it  to 
their  evil  ends.  On  the  contrary,  the  labor  of  re- 
form keeps  still  its  Sisyphean  character ;  the  stone 
that  patriots  toil  so  hard  to  roll  upward  will  al- 
ways, once  they  remove  their  shoulders,  slip  back 
downhill  again. 

Perhaps  we  have  not  yet,  we  Americans,  fully 
considered  how  long  humanity  has  been  at  this 
endless  task ;  how  many  shoulders  have  been  at  the 
stone ;  how  many  times  it  has  gone  painfully  up- 
ward ;  how  many  times,  how  suddenly,  over  what 
anguish  and  despair  and  shame,  it  has  rolled  down- 
ward. Were  we  always  to  keep  in  mind  the  entire 
past  of  representative  government  and  of  democ- 
racy, we  should  often,  I  doubt  not,  tremble  at 
the  thought  of  the  vastness  of  our  audacity.  We 
should  wish,  perhaps,  that  we  had  willed  to  try 
our  experiment  on  a  smaller  scale;  that  we  had 
waved  back  the  millions  of  Europe's  baffled  and 
beaten  who  have  thronged  across  the  Atlantic  to 
our  shores;  that  the  other  millions  left  behind 
would  not  still  look  to  us  so  wistfully,  as  though 

100 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

we  were  condemned  to  bear  the  burden  of  the 
whole  world's  hope  in  democracy. 

This  might  well  be  one's  mood  as  one  consid- 
ered it  all, — but  not  if  one  considered  it  at  sea. 

How  inevitably,  if  one  thinks  long  of  the  State, 
the  old  figure  of  the  ship  recurs !  And  how  surely, 
if  in  thought  or  in  fact  one  looks  out  upon  the 
ocean,  and  forward  to  the  prow,  rising  and  falling, 
and  backward  to  the  vessel's  foaming  wake,  and 
upward  to  the  bridge,  one's  mood  grows  firmer, 
more  heroical !  How  surely,  also,  when  one  is  at 
sea,  do  human  affairs,  with  all  their  bewildering 
intricacy,  sink  away  into  that  right  perspective 
which  permits  the  mind  to  dwell  resolvedly  upon 
the  elementary,  the  elemental  things !  There,  no 
willful  optimism  can  blot  out  the  dreary  vision 
of  human  selfishness,  as  tireless  and  hungry  as  the 
waves ;  of  human  folly,  as  restless  and  as  incon- 
sequent ;  of  human  misery,  as  widespread  and  as 
ceaseless.  But  neither  can  any  coward  awe  ob- 
scure the  shining  truth  that  over  all  the  ocean's 
moods — its  mists  and  storms,  no  less  than  its 
tranquillities  —  the  ship  is  victor.  And  the  mind, 
guided  by  that  thought,  rests  upon  the  primal, 

101 


PROPHETIC  VOICES  ABOUT  AMERICA 

saving  facts  of  human  courage,  wisdom,  hope  un- 
conquerable, —  even  as  he  who  walks  the  bridge 
and  finds  the  ship  her  course  is  fearless,  knowing 
that  he  has  always  the  compass  and  the  sextant, 
the  sun,  the  stars. 
1908. 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

THE    IMMEDIATE    DANGER    OF    THE    NEGRO 


THE  WHITE  PERIL: 

THE  IMMEDIATE  DANGER 

OF  THE  NEGRO 

ON  a  recent  tour  of  the  Southern  States,  from 
Virginia  to  Texas,  I  took  with  me  two  pic- 
tures of  Southern  civilization  at  earlier  periods. 
One  was  Frederick  Law  Olmsted's  record  of  his 
travels  in  the  South  near  the  close  of  the  slavery 
regime  —  a  series  of  volumes  which  John  Morley 
and  the  late  E.  L.  Godkin  have  both  thought 
worthy  of  comparison  with  Arthur  Young's 
"Travels  in  France."  The  other  was  my  own 
abundant  memories  of  Southern  life  in  the  period 
immediately  after  Reconstruction. 

Comparing  my  present-day  observations  with 
these  two  presentments  of  the  past,  I  was  con- 
vinced that  a  very  important  and  a  very  deep  change 
in  the  basis  of  the  entire  industrial  system  of  the 
South  is  quietly  in  progress.  For  confirmation, 
I  have  turned  to  the  elaborate  and  painstaking 

105 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

Report  on  the  Negroes  which  has  recently  issued 
from  the  Bureau  of  the  Census  at  Washington. 
Confirmations  of  a  sort  I  do  seem  to  find  there ; 
but  it  is  extremely  doubtful  if  from  that  source 
alone  I  should  ever  have  derived  my  conviction. 
In  presenting  it,  therefore,  I  shall  rely  rather  on 
the  concrete  observations  of  my  journey  than  on 
the  figures  which  may  seem  to  sustain  them. 
These  would  not  have  their  full  value  nor  their 
true  significance  unless  one  applied  them  cease- 
lessly to  a  mental  picture  of  the  South  as  it  is, 
and  to  Southerners  as  they  are,  and  to  negroes 
and  mulattoes  as  they  are — not  to  dehumanized 
"  whites  "  and  "  blacks." 

It  is  a  century,  perhaps,  since  Virginia  ceased 
to  be  the  main  source  of  the  controlling  tenden- 
cies of  Southern  life.  Her  soil  is  no  longer  the 
best  ground  for  the  study  of  the  civilization  which 
had  its  rise  there.  Geography,  however,  abets  the 
suggestion  of  history  that  any  examination  of  the 
South  should  begin  there :  and,  if  one  is  looking 
particularly  for  signs  of  economic  and  industrial 
change,  Virginia  is  by  no  means  to  be  neglected. 
It  is  doubtful  if  in  any  but  the  very  youngest  of 

1 06 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

the  States  deeper  social  changes  could  be  observed 
than  in  this,  the  oldest. 

Two  movements  of  population  are,  perhaps, 
the  most  important:  an  exodus  and  an  immigra- 
tion. There  is  a  steady  and  widespread  movement 
of  negroes  from  the  countrysides  into  the  towns, 
and  out  of  the  State  into  the  North ;  and  there  is 
a  moderate  but  fairly  steady,  and  apparently  in- 
creasing, inflow  of  whites.  The  gain  of  whites 
from  without  is  not,  it  is  true,  so  rapid  as  in  many 
other  parts  of  the  country.  The  rate  is  probably 
below  the  average  for  the  Atlantic  tier  of  States. 
Neither  is  it  equal  to  Virginia's  present  capacity 
and  demand  for  white  population:  for  there  is 
much  waste  land  within  her  borders  that  would 
yield  a  fair  return  to  careful  husbandry,  there  are 
many  still  untrodden  avenues  to  wealth.  But  it  is 
certainly  interesting  to  learn  that  farmers  from  the 
far  Northwest  are  coming  nowadays  in  consid- 
erable numbers,  sometimes  in  little  colonies,  to 
make  their  homes  on  the  banks  of  the  James  and 
the  Potomac  and  the  Roanoke.  What  is  still  more 
significant  is  that  some  portion  of  our  immense 
immigration  from  Europe  is  at  last  being  diverted, 

107 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

be  it  only  in  driblets  and  wavelets,  from  the  great 
Eastern  cities  and  the  growing  States  of  the  West 
and  Northwest  to  the  oldest  of  all  the  Southern 
States. 

And  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  hope  that  immi- 
gration of  both  these  kinds,  which  for  a  century 
and  more  the  South  has  in  vain  desired,  may  con- 
tinue to  increase.  The  movement  of  the  blacks 
town  ward  and  northward  is  so  widespread  and  per- 
sistent that  it  is  only  natural  to  wonder  who  will 
take  their  places  on  the  farms.  All  over  the  State, 
complaints  are  heard  of  the  scarcity  of  agricul- 
tural labor.  Equally  common  is  the  complaint 
that  the  negro  as  a  laborer,  particularly  as  a  farm- 
hand, is  deteriorating.  It  is  harder  and  harder, 
one  hears  on  all  sides,  to  bind  him  to  the  soil  or  to 
long  terms  of  service  in  any  line ;  and  he  is  likely 
to  leave  at  the  very  seasons  when  the  farmer  needs 
him  the  most.  The  situation — taken  with  the 
fact  of  an  increase  of  immigration — suggests  the 
curious  possibility  of  a  sort  of  second  colonization 
of  the  oldest  of  all  our  shores. 

Even  in  the  cities,  though  the  proportion  of 
negroes  in  the  urban  population  has  not  declined, 

108 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

it  is  plain  that  more  and  more  white  men  are  turn- 
ing to  kinds  of  work  which  used  to  be  done  by 
negroes  only.  In  domestic  service,  it  is  true,  this 
is  not  the  case;  and  in  justice  it  must  be  said  that 
of  all  negro  domestic  servants  the  best  are  doubt- 
less to  be  found  in  eastern  Virginia.  The  negroes 
of  that  region  have  profited  by  the  longest  train- 
ing —  and  in  the  best  school  of  manners  —  that 
any  portion  of  the  race  has  ever  anywhere  received. 
But  it  is  plain  that  the  whites  are  gaining  in  the 
shops  and  mills  and  factories,  and  in  many  other 
employments,  in  the  Virginian  towns.  In  the  cit- 
ies, workingmen's  suburbs,  where  the  children  one 
sees  about  the  doors  are  white,  are  growing  quite 
as  fast  as  the  quarters  given  over  to  negroes.  This, 
it  may  as  well  be  said  at  once,  is  true  also  of  the 
cities  in  other  parts  of  the  South. 

In  the  cities  and  towns  of  the  Carolinas,  where 
such  a  rapid  progress  has  been  made  in  the  manu- 
facture of  cotton  and  of  tobacco,  these  tendencies 
are  even  more  strikingly  exhibited.  The  new  in- 
dustrial movement  in  those  States  has  been  strong- 
est in  the  interior  counties,  particularly  in  what 
is  called  the  Piedmont  section.  The  Piedmont 

109 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

country  has  always  been  the  habitat  of  the  small 
white  farmer;  and  it  is  people  of  this  class  in 
whom  and  by  whom  the  important  changes  have 
been  wrought.  It  is  chiefly  they  who  have  manned 
the  new  mills  and  factories,  populated  the  new 
manufacturing  towns,  and  increased  so  rapidly  the 
population  of  the  transformed  older  towns.  To 
any  one  familiar  with  the  old  Southern  class  dis- 
tinctions, this  will  be  apparent  from  the  briefest 
visit  to  such  a  place  as  Charlotte,  in  North  Caro- 
lina, or  Spartanburg,  in  South  Carolina.  The  new- 
comers, it  is  easy  to  see,  are  "  up-country  folks"; 
and  according  to  the  nomenclature  of  his  own 
particular  quarter  of  the  South  the  visitor  will  set 
them  down  as  "  Crackers,"  as  "  Moss-Backs,"  as 
"Red-Necks,"  as  "Hillians,"  as  "  Coveites,"  as 
"Wool-Hats,"  or  as  "Copperas-Breeches." 

True,  there  are  negro  quarters  in  all  the  larger 
towns  of  the  Piedmont  region,  though  not  in  the 
cotton-mill  villages.  It  is  true  also  that  there  are 
negroes  employed  in  the  tobacco  factories.  In 
these  establishments,  in  fact,  one  finds  them  at 
work  side  by  side  with  the  whites,  frequently  on 
the  same  piece  and  at  the  same  machine.  That 

1 10 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

is  a  phenomenon  which  might  have  been  observed 
in  Richmond  also.  It  is  nowhere  in  the  South 
quite  so  common  a  sight  as  to  suggest  the  lying 
down  together  of  the  lion  and  the  lamb.  If,  how- 
ever, we  consider  it  with  a  right  historical  perspec- 
tive, the  real  sign  of  change  is  in  the  white  man's 
being  there,  not  in  the  presence  of  the  negro. 

In  the  cotton-mills,  the  negro  is  not  found  at  all. 
A  few  years  ago,  one  could  have  found  him  in  a  mill 
at  Charleston,  owned  and  managed  by  white  men. 
Until  a  few  months  ago,  he  could  also  have  been 
found  in  a  little  mill  at  Concord,  in  North  Carolina, 
owned  and  managed  by  members  of  his  race.  But 
with  the  failure  of  these  two  experiments  he  seems 
to  have  disappeared  entirely  from  the  cotton  indus- 
try of  the  South  Atlantic  and  South  Central  States. 
The  only  cotton-mill  in  the  entire  South  which 
now  employs  negroes  is,  I  believe,  at  Dallas^exas.1 
Meanwhile,  to  meet  the  demand  for  mill-hands  in 
the  Carolinas  alone,  from  fifty  to  a  hundred  thou- 
sand white  people  have  given  up  other  employ- 
ments,— mainly,  no  doubt,  farming. 

1  A  silk-mill  at  Fayetteville,  North  Carolina,  operated  by  negroes, 
is  said  to  be  successful. 

Ill 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

The  failure  of  the  negro  to  find  a  place  in  this 
industry,  now  firmly  established  in  the  South,  and 
growing  with  an  amazing  growth,  is  too  big  a  fact 
to  be  taken  without  some  scrutiny  of  the  tests  by 
which  his  unfitness  for  it  seems  to  have  been  estab- 
lished. At  least  two  very  high  authorities  are  de- 
cidedly of  opinion  that  the  trials  which  have  been 
made  of  negro  labor  in  the  cotton-mills  are  by  no 
means  conclusive.  The  president  of  half  a  dozen 
large  and  successful  mills  points  out1  that  the  ex- 
periment at  Charleston  was  made  under  conditions 
which  would  probably  have  been  fatal  even  if 
white  labor  had  been  employed.  The  industry 
never  has  taken  root  in  the  coast  towns,  nor,  indeed, 
in  any  old  urban  community  like  Charleston.  It  is 
understood  that  the  machinery  of  the  Charleston 
mill  was  old;  and  a  principal  advantage  of  the 
Southern  mills  in  general  is  that  their  machinery 
is  of  the  newest  and  the  best.  The  labor  employed 
was  not  carefully  selected,  or  in  any  way  segre- 
gated. The  chances  are  that  the  capital  behind  the 
enterprise  was  inadequate.  That  was  also  the  case 
in  the  experiment  at  Concord.  In  this  view,  Prin- 

1  In  conversation  with  the  writer. 
112 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

cipal  Washington,  of  Tuskegee,  concurs.1  He 
believes  that  negro  labor  could  be  successfully  used 
under  the  conditions  which  have  been  found  es- 
sential with  white  labor :  that  is  to  say,  in  a  segre- 
gated mill  settlement,  owned  and  controlled  by  the 
owners  of  the  plant,  and  with  adequate  capital, 
competent  management,  and  new  machinery. 

In  this  reasoning  there  is  much  force.  But  a  lost 
battle  is  not  restored  by  proving  that  it  ought  to 
have  been  won.  It  may  not  help  the  matter  to  ex- 
plain that  the  field  was  unfavorable,  the  tactics  bad, 
the  odds  unfair.  Insufficient  and  inconclusive  as 
the  tests  have  been,  the  event  may  prove  that  the 
negro's  chance  in  the  cotton-mills  is,  none  the 
less,  lost  forever.  The  mill  president  whose  view 
has  been  given  is  not  desirous  of  seeing  the  ques- 
tion reopened.  The  industry  is  in  a  good  way  as  it 
is.  The  South  is  rapidly  gaining  on  all  the  other 
centers  of  it.  Every  year,  the  white  labor  employed 
in  the  mills  grows  more  and  more  skillful.  It  is  also 
being  trained  systematically  for  the  manufacture 
of  finer  and  finer  grades  of  cottons.  Moreover, 
usage  is  fast  hardening  into  custom,  and  custom 

1  In  a  letter  to  the  writer. 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

soon  makes  rights.  It  is  now  quite  probable  that 
the  Carolina  mill-hands  would  instantly  rebel  at 
any  such  association  with  negroes  as  the  operatives 
in  tobacco  factories  accept  as  a  matter  of  course. 
The  superintendent  of  the  largest  mill  in  the 
Carolinas  is  positive  that  if  a  single  negro  opera- 
tive were  brought  into  it  every  man,  woman,  and 
child  in  the  establishment  would  walk  out.  Even 
if  no  attempt  were  made  to  introduce  negroes  in 
the  same  mills  with  whites  it  is  by  no  means  certain 
that  the  whites  would  endure  their  competition. 

The  reader,  no  doubt,  begins  already  to  under- 
stand the  nature  of  the  change  in  the  South's  in- 
dustrial system  which  my  journey  was  by  this  time 
leading  me  to  think  that  I  perceived.  What  the 
Carolinas  seem  to  exhibit  better,  perhaps,  than  any 
other  part  of  the  South  is  the  rapid  emergence  of 
the  native  poor  whites,  the  South's  great  unutilized 
industrial  reserves,  from  the  narrow  limitations 
which  slavery  set  them,  and  which  nearly  three 
hundred  years  of  ignorance,  inertia,  and  prejudice 
had  strengthened  into  a  Chinese  wall  of  hopeless 
conservatism.  They  have  come  at  once  into  com- 
petition with  the  negroes, — either  direct,  and  on 

114 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

fairly  equal  terms,  as  in  the  tobacco  factories,  or  in- 
direct, and  far  more  fatal  to  the  negroes,  as  in  the 
cotton-mills.  What  at  present  appears  is  that  they 
no  sooner  entered  into  this  great  industry  than  the 
negroes  were  excluded  from  it  altogether.  The  vic- 
tory is  signal.  The  effect  of  the  exclusion  on  the 
negro's  future  can  scarcely  be  overestimated.  But 
this  is  only  one  of  the  many  advantages  which  in 
the  townward  movement,  strong  in  both  races, 
the  poor  white  is  winning  in  the  search  for  town 
employments.  It  is  certainly  not  unreasonable  to 
associate  these  facts  with  the  other  movement 
among  the  negroes  —  the  movement  northward. 
Of  that,  however,  less  is  heard  as  one  travels 
farther  southward  and  southwestward.  Florida  is 
evidently  gaining  negroes  fast  by  migration,  and 
the  movement  southwestward,  to  the  prairies  and 
river-bottoms  of  Mississippi,  Louisiana,  and  Ar- 
kansas, continues  fairly  steady.  Nevertheless,  in 
the  cities  and  towns  of  the  Lower  South  also,  even 
in  those  of  the  Black  Belt,  it  is  apparent  that  the 
white  people  are  changing  their  attitude  toward 
the  manual  occupations.  For  one  sign  of  the 
change,  white  barbers  are  now  common,  even  in 

"5 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

the  smaller  country  towns.  Twenty  years  ago,  they 
were  extremely  rare  outside  of  the  real  cities.  A 
still  more  striking  innovation  is  the  occasional 
employment  of  white  women,  presumably  from 
the  up-country,  as  chambermaids  in  hotels — even, 
in  one  instance,  in  a  hotel  where  the  other  serv- 
ants are  colored.  It  was  left,  however,  for  New 
Orleans,  the  largest  of  all  distinctively  Southern 
cities,  to  exhibit  the  general  change  more  vari- 
ously and  convincingly  than  any  other. 

The  population  of  New  Orleans  is  peculiarly 
good  material  for  the  study  of  race  relationships. 
The  mixture,  not  of  races  merely,  but  of  customs 
and  standards,  of  traditions  and  ideals,  is  extraor- 
dinary. Yet  it  does  not  require  a  long  observation 
of  the  present  situation  there  to  make  one  feel 
sure  that  the  African  has  lost  ground  relatively  to 
all  the  rest.  It  is  possible  now  to  live  in  New  Or- 
leans as  free  from  any  dependence  on  the  services 
of  negroes  as  one  could  be  in  New  York  or  Bos- 
ton. The  supply  of  white  domestic  servants  is,  no 
doubt,  still  scant.  But  white  cooks  and  waiters  are 
not  very  hard  to  find ;  and  white  barbers  and  hair- 
dressers, white  carpenters  and  joiners  and  masons 

116 


THE    WHITE    PERIL 

and  blacksmiths  and  shoemakers,  and  the  like,  are 
at  hand  in  sufficient  numbers.  Bricklaying  is  by  a 
competent  authority1  declared  to  be  the  only  trade 
which  the  negroes  still  control.  The  contrast  in 
these  occupations  with  the  very  recent  past  is  fairly 
startling.  In  1870,  the  city  directory  showed  a 
total  of  3460  negroes  at  work  as  carpenters,  cigar- 
makers,  painters,  clerks,  shoemakers,  coopers,  tai- 
lors, bakers,  and  blacksmiths  and  foundry  hands. 
There  are  not  to-day  ten  per  cent  of  that  num- 
ber of  negroes  employed  in  the  same  trades,  several 
of  which  have  been  completely  lost  to  the  whites. 
Yet,  meanwhile,  the  negro  population  of  New 
Orleans  has  increased  by  more  than  fifty  per  cent, 
—  a  greater  gain  than  the  white  population  shows. 
The  mass  of  the  negroes  are  now  enrolled  in  the 
occupations  which  require  the  least  intelligence 
and  skill,  the  class  called  merely  "laborers  "  ab- 
sorbing thousands. 

It  is  actually  held  that  in  property  and  in  social 
station,  as  well  as  in  industry,  the  negroes  of  New 
Orleans  are  worse  off  to-day,  relatively  and  abso- 

1  Mr.  Norman  Walker,  of  the   Times- Democrat,  whose  knowledge 
of  New  Orleans,  past  and  present,  is  most  thorough. 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

lutely,  than  they  were  in  the  year  1860.  The 
statement  may  be  misleading,  however,  unless  one 
takes  account  of  the  unique  place  which  the  city 
held  in  Southern  civilization  while  slavery  per- 
sisted. It  was  the  Mecca  of  free  negroes.  The 
Latin  element  in  the  white  population  was  pro- 
portionally stronger  than  at  present ;  and  as  a  rule 
the  Latins  do  not  treat  negroes  as  Anglo-Saxons 
do.  Nowhere  else  in  the  South  could  a  man  with 
a  single  drop  of  African  blood  in  his  veins  attain 
the  degree  of  social  acceptance  which  a  consider- 
able class  of  mulattoes  enjoyed  at  New  Orleans. 
A  peculiar  local  custom  went  far  to  account  for 
this,  and  for  the  material  well-being,  the  intelli- 
gence, and  the  refinement  of  manners,  which  the 
New  Orleans  mulattoes  frequently  displayed.  From 
an  early  period  in  the  history  of  the  town,  a  sys- 
tem of  concubinage  prevailed  there,  which  was 
quite  unlike  the  ordinary  illegitimate  intercourse 
between  the  races.  Arrangements  with  something 
of  the  character  of  morganatic  marriages  were 
common.  The  children  of  such  unions  were  usu- 
ally well  taken  care  of,  and  often  highly  edu- 
cated, not  infrequently  at  Paris.  Abroad,  they 

118 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

easily  passed  for  white.  At  home,  they  had  a  social 
life  of  their  own  which  was  not  without  grace 
and  elegance.  But  they  enjoyed  none  of  the  rights 
of  citizenship,  and  were  always  enumerated  as 
negroes. 

There  is  no  more  curious  effect  of  emancipa- 
tion than  the  fate  which  has  befallen  the  surviv- 
ors and  the  descendants  of  this  unfortunate  class. 
Their  habits  and  training  under  slavery  had  un- 
fitted them  for  the  opportunities  which  freedom 
brought ;  and  freedom  denied  them  the  peculiar 
place  which  slavery  had  kept  open.  Some  of  them 
made  their  way  to  France,  where  it  is  probable 
that  their  origin  is  not  known.  But  the  greater 
number  were  simply  driven  into  the  negro  quar- 
ters of  the  town  ;  and  there  they  have  gradually  lost 
their  separateness  and  ceased  to  be  a  class.  The 
faces  of  their  children  are  darker  than  theirs; 
their  grandchildren's,  darker  still.  The  airs  and 
graces  of  the  half-world  are  gone,  along  with  the 
occupation  they  were  won  and  worn  in.  Its  shame 
and  its  curious  distinctions  and  privileges  have 
been  lost  together.  It  must  be  added  that  what  is 
true  in  this  peculiar  way  of  New  Orleans  is  true 

119 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

in  another  way  of  the  other  cities  of  the  South. 
In  the  lowest  of  all  human  competitions,  the  wo- 
man of  Africa  succumbs  to  a  rivalry  more  artful 
and  more  shameful  than  her  own. 

To  these  general  tendencies  of  town  life  the 
towns  and  cities  of  the  Southwest  offer  no  excep- 
tions. As  one  passes  beyond  the  coast  belt  of  Texas, 
the  proportion  of  negroes  rapidly  lessens,  but  their 
preference  for  the  town  over  the  country  is  even 
more  marked  than  it  is  to  the  eastward.  The 
planters  declare  that  it  is  impossible  to  hold  them 
on  the  plantations.  Yet  in  the  towns  it  is  said  that 
the  majority  of  them  subsist  on  the  earnings  of  a 
small  minority  who  are  at  work,  the  women  do- 
ing more  than  their  part,  chiefly  as  servants  and 
laundresses.  For  the  coming  of  white  men  into 
manual  employments  is  even  more  marked  in 
Texas  than  in  the  older  Southern  States.  As  a 
rule,  they  control  the  city  trades  completely.  In 
Houston,  for  instance,  it  is  said  that  the  unions 
would  not  stop  at  force  and  violence  if  the  ne- 
groes offered  them  any  troublesome  competition. 

That,  however,  is  not  the  situation  in  most 
Southern  cities.  As  a  rule,  the  relation  of  the 

120 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

trades  unions  to  the  race  question  is  quite  differ- 
ent; and  the  writer  must  confess  that  the  forces 
engaged  in  this  particular  quarter  of  the  field  have 
aligned  themselves  in  a  way  which  to  him  was 
altogether  surprising.  His  expectation  was  that, 
sooner  or  later,  the  negro  being  excluded  from 
the  unions,  the  race  prejudice  would  reinforce  the 
union  man's  hatred  of  the  scab,  and  the  labor  ques- 
tion would  thus  take  on  in  the  South  a  character 
more  savage  and  dangerous  than  it  has  ever  had  in 
the  North.  But  in  this  forecast  something  in  the 
human  nature  of  one  or  the  other  race,  or  of  both, 
was  overlooked.  The  negroes  have  never  ventured 
into  any  serious  rivalry  with  the  white  unions. 
They  do,  it  is  true,  form  unions  among  themselves, 
which  are,  as  it  is  said,  "  affiliated  "  with  those  of 
the  whites.  But  what  this  means  in  practice  is  that 
both  unions  are  controlled  by  white  men.  Even 
when  the  whites  in  a  particular  trade  or  a  particu- 
lar establishment  are  only  a  minority,  they  have 
their  way.  Negroes  rarely  or  never  offer  to  take 
the  place  of  white  men  who  strike  or  are  locked 
out.  The  explanation  doubtless  is  that,  with  good 
reason,  they  fear  white  men  of  the  working  class 

121 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

worse  than  they  fear  employers  and  capitalists,  who 
frequently  belong  to  the  class  so  often  described  as 
the  natural  protectors  of  the  blacks.  It  seems  to 
be  a  fact  that  white  workingmen  from  the  North 
are  more  bitterly  opposed  to  sharing  any  occu- 
pation with  negroes  than  the  native  whites  are. 
However,  the  situation  in  the  Southwest  may 
indicate  that  when  the  whites  have  sufficient  num- 
bers to  monopolize  the  city  trades  they  will  in- 
cline to  exclude  negroes  altogether. 

All  these  things  might  be  true  of  the  towns,  and 
the  negro  might  still  be  reasonably  safe  if  in  the 
country  his  place  were  secure.  Southern  civiliza- 
tion is  still  markedly  rural.  The  country  still 
greatly  outweighs  the  town  in  wealth  and  in 
population. 

But  there  is  much  in  the  country  to  strengthen 
the  general  inference  one  naturally  makes  from 
what  appears  in  the  towns.  In  the  country,  also, 
white  men  are  doing  more  and  more  of  the  work 
that  was  formerly  left  to  negroes. 

This  is  particularly  true  of  those  parts  of  Vir- 
ginia and  the  Carolinas  whence  the  negroes  are 
migrating  northward  so  steadily.  There  are  even 

122 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

instances,  in  those  quarters,  of  large  planters  and 
landowners  who  now  make  it  a  rule  to  have  nei- 
ther negro  laborers  nor  negro  tenants,  aiming 
especially  to  guard  against  sudden  departures. 
Wherever  the  new  regime  has  been  thus  candidly 
accepted,  it  seems  unlikely  that  the  old  will  ever 
be  restored.  Once  free  of  their  long  dependence 
on  the  African,  these  people  will  hardly  go  back 
to  it  of  their  own  accord. 

But  it  is  still  more  important,  in  any  forecast 
of  the  future,  that  one  finds  a  tendency  to  displace 
the  negro  farmhand  and  the  negro  tenant  in  re- 
gions where  it  cannot  be  attributed  to  a  voluntary 
withdrawal  of  the  negroes.  If  it  were  not  so,  one 
might  incline  to  explain  the  general  invasion  of 
manual  employments  by  white  people  on  the 
ground  of  mere  necessity,  since  there  is  more  work 
to  do  nowadays  than  ever  before  in  the  South,  and 
relatively  fewer  negroes  to  do  it.  The  tendency 
does  appear,  however,  in  quarters  where  the  ne- 
groes are  increasing,  increasing  by  migration, 
increasing  faster  than  the  whites.  It  is  observable 
in  such  strongholds  of  the  African  laborer  as  the 
Black  Belt  of  Georgia  and  Alabama,  the  Yazoo- 

123 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

Mississippi  Delta,  the  valley  of  the  Brazos  in 
Texas. 

It  is  not,  in  these  quarters,  the  native  poor  white 
with  whom  the  negro  has  to  reckon.  The  up- 
country  people,  though  they  are  coming  into  the 
towns,  show  little  disposition  to  invade  the  prairies 
and  the  river-bottoms.  It  is  the  European,  some- 
times the  German,  but  oftener  the  peasant  of 
southern  Europe,  particularly  the  Italian  and  the 
Bohemian,  whose  competition  the  negro  of  the 
cotton  and  rice  and  sugar  belts,  if  he  were  wise, 
would  now  be  learning  to  fear.  In  Texas,  he  en- 
counters the  Mexican  also ;  and,  here  and  there, 
one  hears  talk  of  trying  Chinese  coolies.  But  the 
real  threat  is  from  the  South  of  Europe. 

Unfortunately,  we  do  not  know  the  propor- 
tions of  this  immigration  into  the  South ;  but  after 
a  survey  of  the  field  I  am  sure  that  it  is  already 
considerable,  and  the  signs  are  that  it  is  also  fast 
increasing.  That  is  the  opinion  of  railroad  and 
steamship  officials  and  of  immigration  agents. 
Even  in  the  towns,  effects  of  it  are  easily  discern- 
ible. At  least  one  great  railroad  system  has  begun 
to  use  Italians  instead  of  negroes  for  track  work, 

124 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

as  is  done  so  commonly  in  the  North.  The  new- 
comers are  also  finding  their  way  into  mills  and 
factories.  But  nothing  will  impress  so  deeply  any 
one  familiar  with  the  life  of  the  Lower  South  as 
their  appearance  in  the  sugar-fields,  the  rice-fields, 
and  the  cotton-fields. 

To  understand  how  the  inroad  has  been  made 
and  what  it  may  conceivably  herald,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  understand  what  the  present-day  planta- 
tion of  the  Lower  South  is  like.  A  series  of 
changes  has  transformed  it  into  a  very  different 
affair  from  what  it  was  under  slavery,  and  for 
some  years  after  the  war.  In  place  of  the  old-time 
planter,  there  is  now  a  landlord.  In  place  of  the 
slave  or  the  hired  laborer,  there  is  a  tenant :  some- 
times a  "cash  tenant,'*  paying  a  fixed  money 
rental,  but  oftener  a  "share  tenant,"  paying  his 
rent  with  a  part  of  the  crop.  Instead  of  a  single 
and  single-headed  patriarchal  community,  there 
are  a  number  of  little  farms  under  one  ownership. 
It  is  true  that  the  landlord  retains,  occasionally 
by  contract,  universally  by  custom,  many  of  the 
rights  of  supervision  and  control  which  he  had 
as  a  planter.  He  or  his  overseer  is  constantly  in- 

125 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

specting,  advising  —  in  effect,  commanding.  He 
usually  keeps  in  his  own  hands  the  fencing  and 
draining  and  general  up-keep  of  his  land.  It  is 
more  than  likely  that  he  advances  the  tenants 
their  supplies.  He  may  even  own  the  tenant's 
tools  and  stock,  as  well  as  his  cabin.  Sometimes 
his  control  is  so  nearly  complete  that  it  might  be 
more  correct  to  describe  the  division  of  the  crop 
as  a  payment  by  him  to  the  tenant  for  his  services 
than  as  a  payment  by  the  tenant  to  him  for  the 
land.  Of  course,  there  is  also  the  small  independ- 
ent farmer,  white  or  black.  But  the  share-tenant 
plantation  is  the  typical  agricultural  community 
of  the  Cotton  Belt. 

One  of  the  earliest  attempts  to  introduce  the 
peasant  of  southern  Europe  into  this  system  was 
made  twelve  years  ago,  by  the  late  Mr.  Austin 
Corbin,  at  Sunnyside  Plantation,  on  the  Arkansas 
side  of  the  Mississippi  River.  A  colony  of  Ital- 
ians was  brought  over,  and  established  in  tenantry 
under  contracts  which  looked  to  the  final  pur- 
chase of  their  holdings.  Mr.  Corbin  died,  how- 
ever, before  the  enterprise  was  well  under  way. 
The  men  in  charge  of  it  were  not,  it  is  understood, 

126 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

familiar  with  local  conditions  or  experienced  in 
plantation  management.  As  first  planned  and  con- 
ducted, it  failed.  But  with  the  failure  came  a 
change.  Men  to  the  manner  born  were  put  in 
charge.  It  can  be  stated  to-day,  on  the  best  au- 
thority, that  the  experiment  of  tenant-farming 
with  Italians  at  Sunny  side  is  successful  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  managers  and  owners,  bril- 
liantly successful  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
immigrants  themselves.  They  have  mastered 
quickly  what  they  had  to  learn  about  the  growing 
of  cotton  and  the  other  crops.  They  have  endured 
the  climate.  They  have  proved  both  more  indus- 
trious and  more  thrifty  than  the  negroes  about 
them.  Though  they  began  with  nothing,  a  num- 
ber now  own  the  land  they  cultivate.  Several  have 
bank-accounts  running  into  the  thousands.  Some 
are  sending  money  home  to  pay  debts  or  to  bring 
over  their  kin. 

It  is  probable  that  the  Sunnyside  colony  was 
selected  with  some  care,  and  from  the  thrifty  peas- 
ant farmers  of  the  interior  of  Italy.  Quite  likely, 
therefore,  these  people  are  superior  to  the  mass 
of  Italian  emigrants  to  this  country,  drawn  mainly 

127 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

from  Sicily  and  the  lower  end  of  the  Peninsula. 
But  what  has  happened  at  Sunnyside  is  happening 
at  too  many  other  places  to  be  regarded  any  longer 
as  extraordinary.  One  instance  is  carefully  de- 
scribed in  a  Bulletin  of  the  Bureau  of  Labor.1 
At  Calumet,  a  sugar-plantation  in  Louisiana,  none 
but  negro  labor  was  employed  up  to  eight  years 
ago.  Since  then  there  has  been  a  gradual  dis- 
placement of  the  negroes  by  Italians.  It  does  not 
appear  that  either  there  or  at  Sunnyside  the  blacks 
are  stimulated  by  the  example  and  competition  of 
the  newcomers  to  work  harder  or  to  save  money. 
It  is  found,  too,  that  more  Italian  than  negro  chil- 
dren work  in  the  fields,  and  at  harder  labor.  I 
have  heard  of  Italian  tenants  who,  after  harvesting 
their  own  crops,  have  hired  themselves  as  cotton- 
pickers  to  negro  tenants  who  were  behindhand.  It 
has  come  to  be  a  common  saying,  where  the  ways 
of  both  races  are  known,  that  if  an  Italian  earns 
a  dollar  and  a  quarter  he  will  spend  the  quarter  and 
save  the  dollar,  but  that  if  a  negro  earns  the  same 
amount  he  will  spend — a  dollar  and  a  half.2 

^  *  No.  38.  The  Negroes  of  Cinclart  and  Calumet.   ByJ.  B/Laws. 
*  Italian  emigration  to  the  South  seems  at  present  to  be  entering  on  a 

128 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

The  Italian  as  laborer  and  tenant  on  the  plan- 
tation of  the  Lower  South  is  no  longer  an  experi- 
ment. It  is  clear  that  as  a  rule  he  does  the  work 
at  least  as  well  as  the  negro,  and  that  he  is  more 
likely  to  save  money  and  become  a  landowner. 
The  testimony  concerning  Bohemians  is  quite  as 
favorable.  The  success  of  the  large  German  colo- 
nies in  Texas,  Alabama,  and  other  parts  of  the 
South  has  long  been  established.  Yet  it  is  true  that 
many  planters,  probably  a  majority,  still  prefer  the 
negro,  and  particularly  the  uneducated  negro,  both 
as  laborer  and  as  tenant. 

Explanations,  however,  are  not  far  to  seek. 
There  is  custom,  tradition,  prejudice.  There  is,  in 
most  cases,  a  genuine  fondness  for  negroes.  There 
is  the  habit  of  command,  to  which  the  negro  makes 
the  least  resistance.  Moreover,  by  the  system  of 
advances,  the  planter  can  be  reasonably  sure  of  ob- 

new  phase.  Acting  for  the  Italian  Government,  II  Cavaliere  A.  Rossi  and 
G.  Rossati  and  Professor  A.  Ravaioli  have  been  carefully  studying  the  oppor- 
tunities which  various  sections  hold  out  to  their  countrymen,  particularly 
to  agriculturists.  Their  reports  are  so  favorable  to  parts  of  the  Southern 
States  that  Baron  Mayor  des  Planches,  the  Italian  Ambassador,  has  heart- 
ily indorsed  an  organized  movement  to  turn  Italians  in  that  direction.  I 
wish  there  were  space  to  use  the  information  concerning  this  most  inter- 
esting enterprise  which  Baron  Mayor  has  kindly  placed  at  my  disposal. 

129 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

taining  from  negro  tenants  what  are  called  "spec- 
ulative profits,"  that  is  to  say,  interest  on  advances. 
The  Italian  tenant  very  soon  saves  enough  to  do 
without  advances.  Though  the  negro  may  be  al- 
ways in  debt,  he  rarely  fails,  in  the  long  run,  to 
pay ;  and  he  is  usually  too  poor  a  trader  to  get  the 
best  of  a  bargain  —  which  the  Italian  frequently 
does.  These  considerations  may  for  some  time  op- 
erate to  keep  the  negro  in  the  plantation  system. 
But  they  will  not  suffice  to  keep  the  invaders  out ; 
for  all  over  the  South  the  demand  for  tenants 
and  farm  laborers  outruns  the  supply. 

This  is,  I  know,  but  a  scattering  and  incom- 
plete arrayal  of  the  observations  which  have  con- 
vinced me  that  the  large  province  the  negro  has 
always  held  in  the  industry  of  the  Southern  States 
is  now  being  formidably  invaded.  I  think,  how- 
ever, that  enough  has  been  given  to  show  that 
his  place  in  the  South's  industrial  system  can  no 
longer  be  regarded  as  secure.  Five  years  ago,  Prin- 
cipal Washington  declared  that  the  next  twenty 
years  were  going  to  be  the  most  serious  in  the 
history  of  his  race.  "  Within  this  period/'  he  said, 
"it  will  be  largely  decided  whether  the  negro 

130 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

will  be  able  to  retain  the  hold  which  he  now  has 
upon  the  industries  of  the  South,  or  whether  his 
place  will  be  filled  by  white  people  from  a  dis- 
tance." The  wisdom  of  the  forecast  is  already 
proved;  yet  it  neglected  the  native  poor  white. 

All  that  I  have  said  has  been  by  way  of  show- 
ing that  the  negro  has  lost  ground.  But  without 
his  losing  some  ground  no  invasion  could  have 
occurred ;  and  to  say  that  it  has  occurred  is  not  to 
say  that  he  cannot  resist  it.  Principal  Washington 
is  himself  still  undismayed.  The  apparent  loss  is, 
he  holds,  rather  relative  than  absolute ;  it  is  largely 
explained  by  the  South's  rapid  development  and 
the  gains  of  the  whites  in  mere  numbers.  He  is 
also  cheered  by  the  entrance  of  negroes  into 
higher  and  higher  employments,  such  as  clerk- 
ships, stenography,  and  various  branches  of"  busi- 
ness." My  belief  is,  however,  that  it  is  nearly  al- 
ways mulattoes  who  rise  in  the  industrial  scale.  It 
is  probable,  too,  that  the  negroes  have  the  same 
doubtful  advantage  that  women  have  when  they 
offer  for  the  work  of  men.  They  will  accept  lower 
wages. 

It  is  in  trying  to  determine  how  much  ground 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

the  negro  has  lost  that  we  turn  most  naturally  to 
the  statisticians.  Unfortunately,  the  census-gath- 
erers leave  unasked  many  questions  we  should  like 
to  see  answered ;  and  some  of  the  changes  I  have 
been  describing  are  so  recent  that  the  returns  of 
five  years  ago  may  have  been  but  little  affected  by 
them.  All  that  has  been  said  of  the  townward 
movement  among  both  races,  and  of  the  north- 
ward movement  of  the  negroes  is,  however,  suffi- 
ciently confirmed.  But  it  is  the  tables  dealing  with 
occupations  which  seem  most  apposite.  I  shall  not 
attempt  to  analyze  them.  It  is  safer  to  rest  on  the 
careful  inferences  of  the  experts.1  It  should  be  ex- 
plained that  the  term  "  negroes,"  as  used  in  the 
returns,  covers  all  races  other  than  the  white.  For 
the  South,  however,  the  error  involved  in  the 
failure  to  distinguish  among  colored  peoples  can- 
not be  great. 

In  1 900,  more  than  two  thirds  of  all  the  ne- 
groes engaged  in  remunerative  occupations  in  the 
Southern  States  were  in  the  three  classes  described 

1  The  bulk  of  the  Report  is  the  work  of  Professor  Walter  F.  Willcox, 
of  Cornell  University,  doubtless  the  first  authority  in  the  country  on  sta- 
tistics concerning  negroes.  Professor  Dubois,  of  Atlanta  University,  in 
his  chapter  on  "The  Negro  Farmer,"  is  not  less  rigidly  scientific. 

132 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

as  "laborers,"  "agricultural  laborers,"  and  "farm- 
ers, planters,  and  overseers."  Within  the  decade, 
the  number  of  negro  "laborers"  had  increased  by 
more  than  60  per  cent,  the  "  agricultural  labor- 
ers" by  22.3  per  cent,  the  "farmers,  planters, 
and  overseers  "  by  3 i.i  per  cent.  The  increase  in 
the  first  class  does  not  look  hopeful,  but  the  boun- 
dary lines  between  the  three  classes  are  so  vague 
and  shifting  that  reasoning  about  them  from  the 
tables  is  discouraged.  The  same  difficulty  is  found 
with  certain  other  classes.  There  are  also  certain 
occupations,  such  as  teaching  and  the  Christian 
ministry,  in  which  there  is  no  appreciable  com- 
petition between  the  races.  In  yet  a  third  group, 
including  such  large  classes  as  the  hostlers,  the 
masons,  and  the  porters  and  helpers  in  stores,  no 
figures  by  races  for  the  Southern  States  alone  were 
given  in  1890.  It  appears,  however,  that  in  the 
case  of  at  least  fourteen  leading  occupations  the 
figures  for  the  two  census  years  reveal  the  true 
course  of  an  actual  competition. 

In  five  of  those  occupations,  while  both  races 
gained,  the  negroes  gained  more  rapidly  than  the 
whites.  This  was  true  of  the  class  known  as  "  ser- 

'33 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

vants  and  waiters,'*  of  the  miners  and  quarrymen, 
of  the  nurses  and  midwives,  of  the  iron  and  steel 
workers,  and  of  the  operatives  in  sawmills  and 
planing-mills.  In  the  other  nine  occupations,  the 
negroes  lost  ground  relatively  to  the  whites.  That 
is  to  say,  the  proportion  of  negroes  among  the 
draymen,  truckmen,  and  teamsters  in  the  South, 
among  the  steam-railroad  employees,  among  the 
operatives  in  tobacco  and  cigar  factories,  among 
the  fishermen  and  oystermen,  among  the  engi- 
neers and  firemen  of  other  than  locomotive  en- 
gines, among  the  barbers  and  hairdressers,  among 
the  launderers  and  laundresses,  among  the  seam- 
stresses, and  among  the  carpenters  and  joiners,  was 
less  in  1 900  than  it  was  in  1 890.  In  the  two  classes 
last  named,  there  was  an  absolute  decrease  in  the 
number  of  negroes.  The  figures  for  the  whole 
country  show  also  that  there  were  fewer  negro 
blacksmiths  in  1 900  than  in  1890;  and  there  is  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  what  was  true  of  the  whole 
country  was  not  true  of  the  Southern  States. 

The  census  tables,  therefore,  strengthen  rather 
than  weaken  the  inference  from  actual  observa- 
tion. So  far  as  they  throw  any  light  at  all  on  the 

'34 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

inquiry,  they  indicate  that  five  years  ago  the 
negroes  were  losing  rather  than  gaining  ground 
in  the  industries  of  the  South.  It  is  disappointing 
that  they  do  not  yield  more  positive  inferences 
concerning  the  great  group  of  occupations  cov- 
ered by  the  general  term  "agriculture."  We  have, 
however,  in  the  annual  assessment  lists  of  several 
Southern  States  which  take  account  of  the  race 
to  which  each  taxpayer  belongs,  some  fairly  safe 
material  for  an  estimate  of  the  negro's  place  in 
the  greatest  of  Southern  industries. 

The  Georgia  assessments  have  been  closely  stud- 
ied, and  they  seem  to  show  that  in  the  matter  of 
acquiring  land  the  negroes  of  that  State  are  not 
now  progressing  as  fast  as  they  were  at  an  earlier 
period  of  their  history  as  freemen.  In  1874,  the 
negroes  of  Georgia  owned,  all  together,  more  than 
a  third  of  a  million  acres.  In  seven  years  from  that 
date,  the  amount  was  doubled.  Ten  years  later,  in 
1891,  the  total  passed  a  million  acres.  But  at  the 
end  of  the  next  decade  there  was  practically  no 
increase  at  all.  The  figures  for  the  total  wealth  of 
the  Georgia  negroes,  from  year  to  year,  parallel 
closely  the  figures  for  land  alone.  There  is  an  in- 

'35 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

crease,  gradual,  but  not  constant,  up  to  the  early 
nineties ;  but  for  the  next  decade  a  slight  positive 
decrease.  However,  it  appears  that  the  wealth  of 
the  white  people  of  Georgia  also  declined  in  the 
nineties.  It  cannot  be  said,  therefore,  that  negroes 
have  been  falling  behind  in  the  accumulation  of 
property  in  general.  But  it  is  not  clear  that  their 
failure  to  go  on  acquiring  land  is  accounted  for 
by  the  general  shrinkage  in  values  revealed  by  the 
assessments. 

Moreover,  they  are  in  no  position  to  be  con- 
tent with  merely  holding  their  own.  Their  own 
in  Georgia  is  less  than  three  per  cent  of  all  the 
land  included  in  farms,  and  but  little  more  than 
three  per  cent  of  the  total  wealth  —  and  they  are 
nearly  half  the  population.  True,  they  began  only 
forty  years  ago,  and  with  nothing.  But  the  whites 
also  were  at  that  time  woefully  impoverished.  Is 
it  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  disparity  would 
now  be  nearly  so  great  as  it  is  if  the  two  races 
were  of  equal  capacity  for  accumulation  ?  If  the 
disparity  does  not  rapidly  grow  less,  can  it  be  con- 
tended that  the  negro  is  proving  his  case  as  a  free- 
man, as  an  American? 

136 


THE   WHITE   PERIL 

For  that,  after  all,  in  our  commercial,  industrial 
democracy,  is  the  supreme  test  by  which  the  ne- 
gro's future  on  the  American  continent  will  be 
determined.  The  change  which,  if  my  observation 
is  not  egregiously  at  fault,  is  now  coming  over  the 
industries  of  the  South,  is  not  merely  an  invasion 
of  the  negro's  occupations.  It  is,  rather,  a  change 
of  standards  of  efficiency  in  work  ;  and  the  negro's 
hope  of  rising,  his  chance  of  even  holding  his  own, 
depends  on  his  ability  to  live  up  to  the  new  stand- 
ard. With  the  increase  of  population,  and  a  keener 
and  keener  struggle  for  wealth,  the  standard  of  in- 
dustry, of  skill,  and  of  thrift  will  approximate  more 
and  more  closely  that  of  the  Northern  States  and  of 
the  West  of  Europe.  The  white  man  whom  the 
negro  has  to  fear  is  no  longer  the  man  who  would 
force  him  to  work.  It  is  the  man  who  would 
take  his  work  away  from  him.  The  danger,  the 
immediate  menace,  is  from  rivalry  rather  than 
oppression. 

But  this  is  not  to  say  that  oppression,  past  and 
present,  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  situation.  The 
social  and  political  status  of  the  negro  must  cer- 
tainly be  considered.  If  it  were  different,  his  show- 

'37 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

ing  in  industry  might  also  be  different.  Some,  no 
doubt,  will  hold  that  the  characteristics  which 
handicap  him  most  heavily  in  the  struggle  are 
those  he  got  from  slavery.  That  opinion,  however, 
is  not  so  common  as  it  used  to  be.  It  is  now  freely 
conceded,  even  by  leading  negroes,  that  the  train- 
ing of  slavery  may  have  been  as  good  a  prepara- 
tion for  the  race's  present  opportunities  as  any 
that  this  unregulated  world  of  men  could  ever 
conceivably  have  vouchsafed  it.  The  negroes  of 
America  were  in  this  way  immeasurably  advanced 
beyond  the  competence  of  their  fellows  in  Africa. 
Nine  Southern  employers  out  of  ten  will  still  de- 
clare that  they  prefer  the  laborer  who  has  been 
a  slave  to  the  younger  representatives  of  freedom. 
No  doubt,  an  exception  must  be  made  of  the  grad- 
uates of  schools  like  Hampton  and  Tuskegee. 
The  testimony  of  those  who  know  at  first  hand 
the  work  and  the  lives  of  these  young  men  and 
young  women  is  almost  uniformly  favorable.  They 
are,  however,  but  a  little  leaven  in  so  great  a 
mass.  They  cannot  be  treated  as  representatives, 
for,  apart  from  their  exceptional  training,  they 
may  be  said  to  have  been,  in  a  sense,  selected. 

138 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

But  whatever  we  may  decide  about  the  effects 
of  slavery,  it  is  clear,  I  think,  that  the  denials 
which  they  endure  under  the  caste  system  work, 
on  the  whole,  unfavorably  to  the  negroes  in  the 
struggle  for  wealth.  The  sum  of  the  matter  seems 
to  be  that  life  does  not  offer  to  them  the  same  in- 
ducements to  endeavor  which  it  offers  to  the  white 
men  about  them.  In  the  struggle  for  the  things  of 
this  world,  the  negro  is  not  lured  on,  as  the  white 
man  is,  by  the  visions  of  the  kingdoms  of  this 
world,  and  the  glory  of  them.  It  is  a  common  and 
no  doubt  a  correct  observation  that  he  is  weak  in 
the  desire  and  purpose  of  self-betterment.  But  de- 
sire is  generally  in  some  degree  proportioned  to  its 
objects,  and  purpose  to  its  opportunities.  Black 
men,  I  suppose,  cannot  help  feeling  that  what 
they  can  win  from  life  is  always  short  of  what  they 
might  win  if  they  were  white.  I  do  not  believe 
that  the  mass  of  them  are  agonized  with  the 
sense  of  denial  quite  as  white  men  would  be  in 
their  place.  But  may  not  the  sting  of  it  be  keen- 
est in  those  very  men  and  women  who,  because 
they  aspire  most,  must  be  counted  on  to  do  the 
most  to  lift  up  themselves  and  their  fellows  ?  The 

'39 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

caste  arrangement  which  has  succeeded  slavery  is 
of  necessity,  in  some  measure,  deadening  to  ambi- 
tion. On  the  other  hand,  it  does  not  give  the  white 
man,  as  slavery  did,  the  power,  and  the  individ- 
ually selfish  motive,  to  make  the  negro  work. 

It  has,  no  doubt,  its  compensations.  There  is 
sense  in  saying  that  to  exclude  the  negro  from 
politics  was  a  good  way  to  get  him  to  work.  He, 
like  other  human  beings,  probably  works  at  times 
for  the  mere  reason  that  there  is  nothing  else  in 
particular  to  do.  It  is  also  quite  probably  true  that 
in  his  present  stage  he  works  best,  as  he  fights  best, 
under  the  eyes  of  those  he  looks  to  as  superiors. 
Perhaps,  from  his  low  place  in  the  social  system, 
he  exaggerates  the  happiness  he  would  have  in  a 
higher,  somewhat  as  the  ignorant  exaggerate  the 
advantages  of  being  learned.  Possibly,  if  he  were 
made  in  all  things  the  white  man's  equal,  he  would 
lapse  from  those  Caucasian  ideals  which  attract 
him  from  above.  But  all  these  advantages  of  his 
being  underneath,  real  as  they  may  be,  are,  I 
think,  more  than  offset  by  the  practical  uses  white 
men  may  make  of  their  superior  station  and  their 
control  over  all  branches  of  government.  In  the 

140 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

courts  of  law,  for  instance,  it  is  said  that  the  prop- 
erty rights  of  the  negro  are  protected  quite  as  well 
as  the  white  man's ;  but  this  is  not  true  of  his  per- 
son, of  his  life.  The  negro  assailant  of  a  white 
man  rarely  escapes  his  punishment ;  the  white  as- 
sailant of  the  negro  far  too  frequently  does.  More- 
over, in  all  business  dealings,  selfishness  is  to  be 
presumed.  If  white  men,  in  their  business  deal- 
ings with  negroes,  never  stoop  to  profit  by  their 
ascendancy  through  caste,  then  human  nature  has 
been  sadly  maligned. 

It  must,  I  think,  be  admitted  that  the  com- 
petition is  unequal.  But  it  does  not  help  the  negro 
to  dwell  on  the  handicap  he  carries,  whether  from 
the  past  fact  of  slavery  or  the  present  fact  of  caste. 
Even  if  it  should  prove  true  that  the  heaviest 
handicap  of  all  is  his  distinctly  racial  character- 
istics, entirely  apart  from  his  history  in  America, 
he  might  be  no  better  off  for  admitting  it.  A 
wiser  Godspeed  is  to  tell  him  that  his  best  chance, 
if  not,  indeed,  his  sole  chance,  of  lifting  himself, 
socially  and  politically,  is  precisely  the  chance  he 
has  of  winning  in  the  competition  which  is  now 
being  forced  upon  him.  If  he  would  strive  for  the 

141 


THE   WHITE    PERIL 

best  place  he  can  have  in  our  American  life,  the 
way  to  it  lies  through  work  and  saving. 

The  misery  of  all  our  debating  about  him  is 
that  we  cannot  honestly  pretend  to  be  glad  that 
he  is  here,  or  to  desire  that  his  seed  shall  increase. 
Yet  surely  we  can  afford  the  honesty  of  telling 
him  the  truth.  Let  us  tell  him,  at  least,  that  it  is 
idle  to  put  his  faith  in  party  platforms  or  laws 
of  Congress  or  amendments  to  the  Constitution. 
Let  us  tell  him  that  if  he  would  have  the  white 
man's  ballot  or  the  white  man's  culture,  if  he 
would  exact  from  white  men,  across  the  line  of 
caste,  fair  dealing  and  considerate  treatment,  he 
must  learn  to  match  the  white  man's  industry, 
his  shrewdness,  his  forethought  of  the  morrow. 
Were  the  admonition  harsher,  it  would  be  more 
sincere.  If  he  would  keep  the  foothold  he  has 
now  among  us,  if  he  would  survive  and  live,  and 
look  to  see  his  children  live  after  him,  he  must 
put  money  in  his  purse. 

1904. 


THE   SOUTH   AND   THE   SALOON 


THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  SALOON 

THE  South  is  perpetually  interesting.  So 
much,  at  least,  its  severest  critics  concede. 
It  used  to  be  interesting  because  it  was  unlike  the 
rest  of  the  country,  and  insisted  on  remaining  so. 
It  is  interesting  still;  academic  and  other  students 
of  institutions  continue  to  discover  and  explore 
it,  and  seem  to  find  readers  for  their  reports.  But 
the  reason  is  different.  Although  still  measur- 
ably peculiar,  it  now  attracts  the  philosophically 
minded  because  it  is  changing.  No  other  part 
of  the  country,  in  fact,  presents  to-day  quite 
such  a  spectacle  of  transitions.  Five  or  six  years 
ago,  traversing  it  from  Virginia  to  Texas,  I  mar- 
veled that  it  had  grown  so  unlike  what  it  had  been 
fifteen  years  earlier.  Revisiting  it  now,  I  seem  to 
find  it  departing  even  more  widely  from  the  state 
and  ways  in  which  I  found  it  then. 

If,  however,  one  looks  a  little  more  carefully 
into  these  changes,  they  cease  to  seem  so  surpris- 
ingly sudden.  So  much,  in  fact,  is  almost  axiomatic 

M5 


THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  SALOON 

concerning  all  civilizations.  The  apparent  quies- 
cence which  precedes  a  striking  tenement  in  poli- 
tics or  social  usage  is  usually  only  a  surface  calm, 
a  mere  stiffness  of  the  crust,  beneath  which  change 
has  in  fact  been  ceaseless;  and  this  is  particu- 
larly true  of  those  alterations  in  the  life  of  a 
community  which  accomplish  themselves,  and 
become  overt,  by  sweeping  legislation,  swiftly 
enacted. 

Within  a  year  or  two,  the  South  has  surprised 
the  rest  of  the  country  with  the  culmination  of 
two  such  processes.  Several  States  have  suddenly 
and  violently  asserted  the  right  to  regulate  rail- 
roads. Three  have  as  suddenly  prohibited  the 
traffic  in  intoxicating  liquors.  Perhaps  Oklahoma, 
which  has  come  into  the  Union  with  prohibition 
in  her  Constitution,  is  sufficiently  Southern  to  be 
added  to  this  list.  The  North  Carolina  Legis- 
lature, in  special  session,  has  submitted  a  prohibi- 
tion statute  to  popular  vote,  in  the  full  expectation 
that  it  will  carry.  In  other  States,  a  fervid  and 
confessedly  potent  agitation  looks  to  the  same 
result. 

Of  course,  neither  of  these  two  kinds  of  legis- 

146 


THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  SALOON 

lation  is  confined  to  the  South.  Northern  and 
Western  States  also  have  tried  them,  and  still  try 
them.  But  that  might  once  have  almost  seemed 
a  reason  why  one  should  not  expect  to  find  them 
prevailing  in  the  South  at  all.  What  now  is  most 
surprising,  and  food  for  philosophizing,  is  that 
the  South  is  not  only  becoming  like  the  rest  of 
the  country,  but  "more  so."  The  facts  suggest, 
and  not  altogether  misleadingly,  that  some  social 
force  or  forces,  long  potent  elsewhere,  but  in  the 
South  atrophied  or  baffled,  may  now  be  at  work 
there  with  the  proverbial  energy  of  things  new 
or  newly  freed.  It  would  not  be  a  very  bad  gen- 
eralization to  say  that  the  South  has  recently 
come  into  that  phase  of  democracy  in  which 
government  stretches  its  authority  to  the  utter- 
most in  the  endeavor  to  enforce  absolute  morali- 
ties. Government  is  for  the  time  being  well-nigh 
puritanized. 

This  has  come  about  elsewhere,  and  at  other 
periods.  But  why  should  it  come  about  "  down 
South,"  and  now?  To  explain  that,  we  should 
have  to  go  rather  deep  into  Southern  life.  To 
explain  it  fully,  we  should  also  have  to  go  rather 

"47 


THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  SALOON 

far  back  in  Southern  history.  If  we  should  go 
deep  enough  and  far  enough,  we  should  find,  I 
think,  that  the  South's  present  attitude  toward  the 
railroads  and  its  uprising  against  the  saloon  are 
not  entirely  unconnected. 

Of  the  earlier  changes  in  Southern  life  since  the 
war,  none  compares  in  importance  with  the  po- 
litical revolution  of  some  twenty  years  ago,  when 
politics  ceased  to  be  "  qualities  "  in  South  Caro- 
lina, and  "  Ben  "  Tillman  succeeded  a  long  line 
of  aristocratic  governors ;  when  in  State  after  State, 
-  though  less  violently  than  in  South  Carolina, 
because  in  no  other  State  had  the  old  ruling 
class  monopolized  political  power  so  jealously  or 
set  social  standards  so  imperiously,  —  the  "com- 
mon" white  man  awoke  to  a  sense  of  his  power 
in  the  body  politic.  I  call  that  particular  change 
a  revolution,  and  would  use  a  stronger  term  if 
there  were  one;  for  no  other  political  movement 
—  not  that  of  1776,  nor  that  of  1860-1861  — 
ever  altered  Southern  life  so  profoundly. 

It  is  true  that  the  South  never  was  such  an 
aristocracy  as  too  many  writers  about  the  slavery 
regime,  tempted  into  picturesqueness,  would 

148 


THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  SALOON 

have  us  think.  Always,  even  in  the  "  blackest " 
counties,  in  all  the  States,  men  who  had  little  land 
and  few  slaves  counted  in  politics.  Many  of  the 
foremost  public  characters  rose  from  that  class. 
But  neither  the  interests  nor  the  ideals  of  the  plain 
man  dominated  Southern  civilization.  Govern- 
ment for  the  most  part  responded  to  the  demands 
of  wealth  invested  in  land  and  slaves,  and  the  pre- 
vailing social  tradition  gave  to  birth,  breeding, 
superiority,  greater  weight  than  they  had  else- 
where in  America.  Cities  being  few,  it  was  near 
the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  before  a  com- 
mercial class  developed  which  could  challenge 
that  tradition. 

Nor  did  the  plain  white  man  come  into  his 
birthright  at  once  on  the  fall  of  slavery.  For  a 
generation  or  more,  the  impoverishment  of  the 
whole  region  operated  to  withold  from  him  the 
opportunities  which  slavery  had  so  long  denied. 
His  real  enfranchisement  came  only  with  the 
gradual  dawn  of  prosperity,  and  the  accompany- 
ing changes  in  the  South's  industries.  Those 
changes  have  brought  him  much  the  same 
chance  in  life  which  he  has  in  the  North.  And 

149 


THE   SOUTH    AND   THE    SALOON 

with  that  there  has  come  to  him  the  new  sense  of 
independence  and  power. 

In  politics,  as  he  quickly  discovered,  the  sense 
of  power  was  all  he  needed  in  order  to  possess  the 
reality.  More  gradually,  and  not  even  yet  com- 
pletely, he  has  come  into  his  own  in  all  those 
subtler  ways  in  which  democratic  usages  and 
ideals  supplant  the  aristocratic.  The  disfranchise- 
ment  of  the  blacks  has  in  this  respect  hastened  the 
process  begun  by  their  emancipation.  It  has  weak- 
ened the  prestige  of  the  old  slave-owning  class, — 
of  the  men  who,  living  in  those  quarters  where 
negroes  are  most  numerous,  not  only  represented 
them,  so  long  as  they  voted  or  were  supposed  to 
vote,  in  legislatures  and  democratic  conventions, 
but  could  usually,  by  appealing  to  the  fear  of  negro 
domination,  dictate  party  policies.  The  negro 
eliminated,  majority  rule  seems  now  to  prevail  as 
generally  among  Southern  whites  as  in  the  North. 
And  in  the  South,  as  in  the  North,  the  great  ma- 
jority of  the  majority  are  plain  or  "  common  " 
men. 

But  not  quite  the  same  kind  of  "common" 
men  as  in  the  North ;  else  history  were  negligi- 

150 


THE   SOUTH    AND   THE   SALOON 

ble.  For  one  difference,  the  plain  man  in  the 
South  seems  to  feel  a  rather  deeper  distrust  of 
capital,  a  rather  angrier  hostility  to  every  privi- 
lege of  wealth,  than  one  finds  in  the  plain  man 
of  the  North  who  is  not  a  socialist  or  aggressively 
a  "  workingman."  Were  we  to  follow  that  lead, 
and  consider  carefully  the  industrial  past  and  the 
economic  outlook  of  the  plain  Southerner,  we 
should,  I  think,  discover  why  Southern  legisla- 
tures have  been  dealing  so  drastically  with  the 
railroads.  But  for  the  moment  what  challenges 
inquiry  is  the  South's  fierce  awakening  to  an  old 
moral  issue,  and  one  naturally  turns,  therefore, 
to  the  moral  training  and  standards  of  the  now 
dominant  class. 

The  word  "class"  is  usually  misleading  in 
America.  One  must  employ  it  cautiously.  By  the 
plain  or  "  common  "  men  of  the  South  I  do  not 
mean  a  sort  of  people  that  can  be  clearly  separated 
from  the  rest.  I  do  not  mean  the  vaguely  imag- 
ined class  which  is  usually  called  "poor  whites" 
in  books  about  the  South  by  writers  who  do  not 
live  there.  Those  pathetically  backward  dwellers 
in  the  mountain  regions  are  still  a  comparatively 


THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  SALOON 

negligible  factor,  save  as  they  have  come  down, 
attracted  by  the  town  and  the  factory,  and  joined 
the  greater  mass  that  is  both  poor  and  white,  but 
without  inverted  commas.  The  really  common 
sort  of  common  people  have  always  dwelt  in  the 
lowlands  and  the  Piedmont  region.  We  need  not 
distinguish  between  the  small  farmers,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  artisans  and  small  shopkeepers  of 
the  towns,  on  the  other.  It  is  enough  if  we  merely 
exclude  all  who  have  a  tradition  of  wealth  and 
of  political  and  social  ascendancy  before  the  war. 
That  means  excluding  the  very  attractive  people 
of  Mr.  Thomas  Nelson  Page's  stories.  It  means 
excluding,  I  fear,  all  such  people  as  the  South- 
erners one  meets  in  the  North  lead  one  to  believe 
that  they  and  theirs  have  always  been. 

Now,  in  the  class  which  we  thus  deliberately 
neglect  as  a  no  longer  controlling  minority,  the 
Episcopal  Church  has  always  had  its  main  strength 
in  the  South.  The  Southerner  of  "quality"  is 
usually  of  that  religious  fold.  When  he  is  not,  he 
is  most  likely  Scotch-Irish  and  Presbyterian.  In 
South  Carolina  he  might  be  a  French  Huguenot; 
in  Louisiana  and  Maryland,  a  Roman  Catholic. 

152 


THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  SALOON 

The  far  greater  mass  of  plain  people  to  whom  we 
turn  are  nearly  all  Methodists  or  Baptists. 

They  take  their  moral  and  religious  guidance, 
therefore,  from  a  ministry  whose  methods  and 
whose  power  constitute  an  important  neglected 
fact  of  Southern  life.  In  both  these  denomina- 
tions, the  proportion  of  college-bred  or  otherwise 
cultivated  men  and  women  is  comparatively  small. 
Both  inculcate  a  strict  and  narrow  adherence  to 
the  scriptural  code  of  morals.  Both,  for  instance, 
frown  upon  dancing  and  amateur  theatricals.  Nei- 
ther requires  its  ministers  to  be  educated.  In  both, 
the  preaching  is  for  the  most  part  highly  emo- 
tional. Both  are  given  to  revivals. 

Mr.  Walter  H.  Page  and  other  progressive 
Southerners  have  spoken  bitterly  of  the  Southern 
pulpit  as  an  influence  constantly  operating  to  ar- 
rest intellectual  development;  and  that  is  not  the 
only  ground  on  which  the  Methodist  and  Baptist 
preachers  in  particular  are  open  to  criticism.  But 
on  the  score  of  zeal,  industry,  devotion,  these  men 
need  not  fear  comparison  with  any  priesthood  in 
the  world.  None  too  well  equipped  intellectually, 
and  deriving  no  aid  from  any  superiority  in  birth 

153 


THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  SALOON 

or  breeding  or  culture  to  the  people  whom  they 
serve,  they  are  also  generally  ill-paid.  Many  of 
them  must  maintain  families  on  salaries  of  four 
or  five  hundred  dollars  a  year.  Yet  they  rarely 
incur  a  charge  of  loitering  in  the  vineyard.  They 
preach  incessantly ;  they  make  daily  rounds  of 
visits  to  the  homes  of  their  communicants;  they 
act  as  unpaid  canvassers  for  their  denominational 
schools  and  colleges ;  they  keep  in  touch  with  one 
another,  and  study  their  people  as  closely  as  the 
most  observant  politician;  they  do  not  neglect 
the  ever-widening  influence  of  women.  So  great 
is  the  power  which  they  thus  collectively  exercise 
that  if  one  were  to  call  the  plain  people  of  the 
South  "priest-ridden,"  the  strongest  objection  to 
the  phrase  would  be,  that  the  Methodist  and  Bap- 
tist ministers  do  not  consider  themselves  priests. 
It  is  these  men  in  the  South  who  have  taken 
the  lead  in  the  now  almost  world-wide  movement 
for  prohibition.  Episcopal  clergymen  hardly  ever 
take  an  active  part  in  the  movement ;  not  infre- 
quently, they  actually  oppose  it,  as  not  a  wise 
or  proper  method  to  promote  temperance.  The 
Catholic  clergy,  not  a  great  power  in  the  South 

154 


THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  SALOON 

outside  of  a  few  large  cities,  take  the  same  general 
attitude.  Presbyterian  ministers,  although  they 
may  favor  prohibition,  rarely  feel  free  to  advocate 
it  from  the  pulpit.  But  the  Baptist  and  Methodist 
preachers  commit  themselves  to  it  unreservedly, 
inside  and  outside  the  pulpit.  They  are  for  pro- 
hibition by  local  option  as  against  high  license  and 
dispensaries,  but  for  State  prohibition  as  against 
local  option.  Temperance  they  have  virtually 
ceased  to  preach,  demanding  instead  that  Govern- 
ment compel  all  men  to  become  teetotalers. 

And  it  is  their  congregations  which  supply  the 
readiest  converts  to  this  policy.  To  the  small 
farmer  or  shopkeeper  or  artisan  of  the  South,  the 
drink  habit  presents  itself  in  its  crudest,  least  de- 
fensible form.  Among  people  of  this  class,  the 
custom  of  taking  wine  with  food  is  virtually  un- 
known. Of  wines,  in  fact,  the  common  people  of 
the  South  know  so  little  that  they  use  the  word 
"wine"  as  if  there  were  only  one  kind  of  wine 
in  the  world.  Beer,  while  of  course  a  not  uncom- 
mon beverage  in  the  cities,  does  not  find  its  way 
into  the  country.  Accordingly,  to  drink  means 
ordinarily  to  drink  whiskey,  and  not  at  table  or 


THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  SALOON 

in  the  restraining  company  of  women,  but  in  sur- 
roundings the  least  conducive  to  moderation  and 
decency.  It  means,  therefore,  deplorably  often, 
not  merely  drunkenness,  but  rowdyism.  The  greed 
of  the  liquor-dealers  and  the  brewers  behind 
them,  and  their  amazing  contempt  of  public  sen- 
timent, have  contributed  to  render  the  drinking 
habits  of  the  South  as  unlike  as  possible  to  those 
of  southern  Europe,  where  wine-drinking  is  gen- 
eral, even  among  the  peasants,  and  drunkenness 
extremely  rare.  Nowhere  does  the  prohibitionist 
agitator,  with  his  terrifying  figures  and  highly 
charged  oratory,  find  a  better  opening. 

Once  the  Democratic  party,  dominant  every- 
where in  the  South,  had  committed  itself  to  local 
option,  prohibition  made  rapid  gains  in  the  rural 
counties  and  the  smaller  towns.  Two  years  ago, 
when  the  movement  for  State  prohibition  won  its 
first  victory  (in  Georgia),  the  greater  part  of  the 
South  was  already  under  prohibition  laws.  A  year 
ago,  the  leader  in  the  local-option  movement  in 
North  Carolina l  pointed  out  that  nine  tenths  of 

1  Mr.  J.  W.  Bailey,  of  Raleigh,  President  of  the  North  Carolina 
Anti- Saloon  League,  1903-07. 

156 


THE   SOUTH   AND    THE   SALOON 

the  people  of  that  State  were  living  in  prohibition 
territory,  and  that  there  were  within  its  limits 
only  one  fifth  as  many  open  saloons  as  in  Kansas, 
which  has  had  State  prohibition  for  a  quarter  of 
a  century. 

The  same  authority  also  declares  that  the  South, 
having  turned  from  the  local-option  plan  to  State 
prohibition,  is  now  "in  full  cry  on  the  coldest 
trail  in  its  history."  That  is  an  opinion  which  gets 
much  support  from  the  report,  ably  summarized 
by  President  Eliot,  of  the  sub-committee  on  legis- 
lation appointed  by  the  Committee  of  Fifty,  which, 
several  years  ago,  secured  for  us  the  most  author- 
itative data  we  have  on  the  liquor  problem.  But 
the  men  and  women  now  fighting  the  saloon  in 
the  South  do  not  make  use  of  such  material  as 
the  Committee  supplies.  In  a  city  where,  after  an 
absorbing  campaign,  prohibition  recently  won, 
the  copy  of  "The  Liquor  Problem"  in  the  pub- 
lic library  —  quite  probably  the  only  copy  in  town 
-  does  not  seem  to  have  been  consulted  at  all.  The 
chairman  of  the  "dry"  committee  had  not  even 
heard  of  the  Prohibition  Year-Book.  The  fight 
was  won,  in  fact,  mainly  by  the  devices  of  aMeth- 

157 


THE   SOUTH    AND   THE   SALOON 

odist  revival  or  "protracted  meeting  " :  by  terrify- 
ing and  rather  coarsely  emotional  oratory  from 
pulpit  and  platform,  interspersed  with  singing  and 
praying;  by  parades  of  women  and  children, 
drilled  for  the  purpose ;  by  a  sort  of  persecution, 
not  stopping  short  of  an  actual  boycott,  of  promi- 
nent citizens  inclined  to  vote  "wet";  by  the 
Anti-Saloon  League's  very  effective  short  method 
with  politicians,  whom  it  convinces  that  they 
have  more  to  lose  by  offending  the  league  than  by 
deserting  the  saloon-keepers ;  and  finally,  by  fairly 
mobbing  the  polls  with  women  and  children, 
singing,  praying,  and  doing  everything  conceiv- 
able to  embarrass  and  frighten  every  voter  who 
appeared  without  a  white  ribbon  in  his  lapel. 

It  is  these  methods,  gradually  perfected  in  cam- 
paign after  campaign,  that  have  won  for  prohibi- 
tion so  many  victories  in  the  towns  and  counties. 
It  is  the  politicians'  absolute  helplessness  against 
such  methods,  and  the  success  of  the  Anti-Saloon 
League  in  its  determination  to  teach  them  that 
"the  most  dangerous  thing  for  a  politician  to 
tamper  with  is  the  saloon  vote,"  which  has  sud- 
denly won  over  to  State  prohibition  legislatures 

158 


THE   SOUTH    AND   THE   SALOON 

full  of  men  who  never  before  gave  any  help  to  the 
temperance  cause. 

And  it  is  the  dislike  of  such  methods,  however 
moral  the  cause,  which  must  inspire  in  thought- 
ful, unexcited  minds  a  grave  distrust  of  the  per- 
manence of  the  good  results  of  the  movement. 
The  depth  and  sincerity  of  the  present  feeling 
against  the  saloon  are  beyond  question.  There  is 
in  it  a  moral  and  religious  fervor  which  reminds 
one  of  the  way  the  Piagnoni  —  the  white-ribbon- 
ers  of  Savonarola's  time  in  Florence  —  drove  vice 
and  even  vanity  out  of  the  city  by  the  Arno ;  of  the 
Puritan  revolution  in  England ;  of  countless  lesser 
social  purifications.  But  one  cannot  recall  the 
achievement  of  the  Piagnoni,  as  George  Eliot  has 
portrayed  it  in  "  Romola,"  without  recalling  also 
the  reaction  that  followed  —  Dolfo  Spini  and  his 
brutal  Compagnacci,  Savonarola  in  the  flames,  the 
Medici  returned.  One  cannot  think  of  Puritan 
England  without  remembering  also  the  England 
of  the  Restoration  — the  profligate  king  and  bra- 
zen court,  the  playhouses,  which  had  been  closed 
to  Shakespeare,  reopened  to  the  indecencies  of 
Wycherley  and  Etherege,  the  shameful  tribute  to 

'59 


THE   SOUTH    AND   THE   SALOON 

France,  the  persecuted  Milton.  One  is  moved  to 
question  whether  any  moral  cause  is  ever  perma- 
nently advanced  otherwise  than  by  fair  appeals  to 
a  deliberate  public  opinion  and  an  uninflamed 
public  conscience. 

But  to  admit  that  reactions  always  follow  vio- 
lent gains,  that  a  penalty  is  always  paid  for  big- 
otry and  intemperate  zeal — is  not  this  merely  to 
admit  that  moral  progress  is  wave-like  ?  As  civil- 
ization advances,  the  reactions  may  well  be  less 
and  less  in  proportion  to  the  gains.  Moreover,  un- 
less long  study  of  Southern  history  has  utterly  mis- 
led me,  it  has  always  been  a  mistake  to  infer 
fickleness,  instability  of  purpose,  from  the  South- 
ern people's  almost  Latin  responsiveness  to  emo- 
tional appeals.  On  the  contrary,  they  have  often 
displayed  an  extraordinary  steadfastness  in  courses 
hastily  entered  upon.  No  doubt  it  is  too  much  to 
expect  that  prohibition  will  hold  all  the  ground 
it  has  won  and  may  yet  win  in  the  South,  or  that 
prohibition  laws  will  not,  there  as  elsewhere,  often 
fail  of  enforcement.  But  the  saloon  can  never  be 
again  in  the  South  what  it  has  been  in  the  past. 
That  the  politicians  will  ever  again  serve  it  as  they 

160 


THE    SOUTH    AND    THE   SALOON 

once  did  is  not  believable.  They  have  been  too 
thoroughly,  too  ludicrously  frightened.  One  may 
even  hope  that  in  the  long  run  the  open  saloon  is 
bound  to  go  entirely;  that  with  the  opening-up 
of  the  South  to  all  kinds  of  education  and  soften- 
ing and  refining  influences,  the  indefensible  drink- 
ing customs  of  most  Southerners  —  as  of  most 
Americans,  indeed  —  will  gradually  be  changed ; 
and  that  thus,  without  any  countervailing  sacrifice 
of  moral  independence  or  personal  liberty,  drunk- 
enness will  grow  rare  enough  to  be  well-nigh  neg- 
ligible. 

That  is  a  great  deal  to  hope.  But  there  is  one 
feature  of  this  temperance  movement  peculiarly 
conducive  to  hopefulness  for  Southern  civiliza- 
tion. I  cannot  better  indicate  what  that  feature 
is  than  by  pointing  out  that  I  have  hardly  men- 
tioned the  negro  at  all.  It  is  quite  probable  that 
his  presence  in  the  South  has  influenced  some 
white  voters.  It  has  doubtless  been  remembered 
that  in  race  riots  whiskey  usually  plays  a  part. 
But  this  argument  has  not  in  fact  been  generally 
employed.  On  the  temperance  question,  no  race 
line  has  been  drawn.  Whites  and  blacks  have  di- 

161 


THE   SOUTH    AND  THE   SALOON 

vided  on  it  with  little  or  no  reference  to  its  bear- 
ing on  their  racial  relations.  For  once,  it  would 
seem  as  if  the  South  had  actually  been  able  to  put 
aside  the  race  issue  altogether.  One  is  tempted  to 
declare  that,  if  it  can  do  that,  it  can  do  anything. 

1908. 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S  OPPORTUNITY 


PRESIDENT  TAFT'S 
OPPORTUNITY 

A  STRONG  President's  power  of  initiative  in 
his  own  party  is  very  great.  It  was  the  will 
of  Cleveland  that  committed  the  Democrats  to 
tariff  reform  as  their  main  proposal  in  the  cam- 
paignof  1888.  In  1896,  it  is  true,  Cleveland  failed 
to  hold  his  party  against  the  free-silver  craze ;  but 
he  made  the  outcome  doubtful  for  months,  not- 
withstanding that  his  leadership  was  already  greatly 
weakened,  and  that  the  heresy,  as  is  now  apparent, 
had  infected  an  overwhelming  majority  of  the 
party  throughout  the  country.  Had  McKinley 
lived,  and  remained  steadfast  in  the  position  he 
took  in  his  last  public  speech,  the  chances  are  that 
years  ago  we  should  have  had  some  kind  of  re- 
vision of  the  tariff  by  the  Republicans.  President 
Roosevelt,  on  the  other  hand,  devoting  himself  to 
the  task  of  keeping  within  bounds  the  corporations 
and  trusts,  brought  his  party  to  an  at  least  normal 
concurrence  in  his  views. 

165 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

The  Republican  party  has  greater  coherency 
than  the  Democratic.  A  Republican  President  has, 
therefore,  a  greater  power  of  initiative  in  his  party 
than  the  Democratic  President  has  in  his.  The 
present  state  of  both  parties  gives  to  President  Taft 
an  opportunity  to  exercise  this  power  to  extraordi- 
nary ends.  If  he  has  the  will  and  the  skill,  it  seems 
probable  that  he  may  alter  the  composition  of 
both ;  and  that  he  may  also  alter  their  geograph- 
ical alignment.  To  make  this  plain,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  go  inside  the  lines  of  both,  and  examine 
the  actual  groupings  of  voters  as  they  have  been 
revealed  by  the  several  elections  since  the  first 
nomination  of  Mr.  Bryan  in  1896. 

That  nomination,  of  course,  marked  the  tri- 
umph of  the  radicals  in  the  Democratic  party.  It 
also  opened  the  door  to  the  Populists,  the  mass  of 
whom  have  since  entered,  or  reentered,  the  Dem- 
ocratic ranks.  With  this  great  reinforcement,  the 
radicals  seem  to  be  still  clearly  in  the  majority. 
Their  greatest  strength  is  in  the  West,  and  they 
have  the  upper  hand  in  the  South.  In  certain  of 
the  Eastern  States  also  the  element  most  in  sym- 
pathy with  them  has  got  control  of  the  party  ma- 

166 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

chinery.  But  this  element,  made  up  largely  of  the 
foreign-born,  and  strongest  in  the  cities,  does  not 
fuse  readily  or  completely  with  the  radical  faction 
of  the  West  and  South,  which  is,  so  to  speak, 
country-bred  ;  which  is  in  fact  the  counterpart  in 
all  essentials  of  Jefferson's  following  and  of  An- 
drew Jackson's.  What  specific  policies  it  stands 
for  to-day  is  not  of  the  first  importance.  In  gen- 
eral, it  stands  for  opposition  to  privilege,  particu- 
larly the  privilege  of  wealth,  and  it  readily  accepts 
crude  devices  to  equalize  opportunity.  But  Ameri- 
cans of  this  class  have  sincere  reverences,  and  pas- 
sionately associate  venerated  names  with  every 
new  proposal  they  make.  It  is  no  injustice  to  call 
certain  of  their  proposals  a  menace  to  free  govern- 
ment; yet  it  is  no  more  than  justice  to  recognize 
the  spirit  behind  those  proposals  as  the  true  mili- 
tant spirit  of  American  democracy.  That  conces- 
sion enables  us  to  see  also  wherein  this  home-bred 
and  rural  radicalism  differs  from  that  of  the  East, 
or,  to  be  more  accurate,  from  that  of  the  cities. 
The  spirit  of  the  latter  is  in  fact  the  spirit  of  Euro- 
pean democracy.  Between  the  two  wings  of  the 
radical  faction  there  is  thus,  as  there  was  between 

167 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

Jefferson's  ideas  and  those  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, more  kinship  than  identity.  But  conditions 
of  life  throughout  the  Republic  grow  constantly 
more  uniform ;  the  local  and  peculiar  yields  to  the 
general.  Every  year  America  comes  into  closer  and 
closer  touch  with  "abroad  "  ;  the  national  yields 
to  the  cosmopolitan,  the  universal.  Discontents 
and  aspirations  concerning  the  social  order  in 
America  will,  therefore,  we  may  feel  sure,  tend  to 
ally  themselves  with  like  discontents  and  aspira- 
tions in  older  lands,  and  become  more  and  more 
frankly  socialistic.  The  best  reason  given  for  sup- 
porting Bryan  last  autumn  was  that  his  election 
would  put  off  the  day  when  a  really  formidable 
socialist  party  shall  throw  down  its  challenge  to 
whichever  of  our  two  historical  parties  may  still 
survive. 

That  argument  prevailed,  no  doubt,  with  some 
members  of  the  other  great  Democratic  faction, 
whom  it  is  the  fashion  to  call  "conservatives,"  but 
whom,  as  our  party  system  grows  more  like  that 
of  Europe,  we  would  perhaps  better  call  "  mod- 
erates." What  the  Rockingham  Whigs  were  in 
English  politics  at  the  time  of  the  American  Rev- 

168 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

olution,  these  men  are  in  our  political  life  to-day. 
No  other  political  group  has  so  large  a  proportion 
of  men  of  light  and  leading ;  no  other  holds  so 
steadfastly  to  definite  principles,  or  to  principles 
which  history  and  reason  so  well  approve:  yet 
no  other,  seemingly,  has  so  little  chance  to  come 
into  power.  Unable  either  to  countenance  the 
dangerous  vagaries  of  the  radicals  now  in  control 
of  their  own  party  or  "to  shut  their  eyes  to  what 
they  regard  as  the  long  subservience  of  the  Re- 
publican party  to  privilege,  they  have  nevertheless 
learned  from  their  experience  in  1896  that  it  is 
useless  to  setup  a  party  establishment  of  their  own. 
In  1 904,  when  the  Democratic  convention  named 
a  candidate  they  could  accept,  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  Bryan's  more  devoted  followers  fell  away 
from  him  and  left  him  to  mortifying  defeat. 
While  the  radicals  control,  the  moderates  are  thus 
thrown  into  a  hesitation  which  is  fast  becoming 
their  chronic  state.  Some,  still  clinging  to  the 
hope  of  bringing  the  party  back  to  sound  policies, 
keep  themselves  "regular"  as  best  they  can; 
some  have  become  Republicans ;  the  greater  num- 
ber, though  believers  in  party,  find  themselves 

169 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

forced  into  the  attitude  of  independents.  With  the 
true  independents,  they  hold  the  balance  of  power 
in  many  States.  This  fact  came  out  at  the  last 
election  more  strikingly  than  ever  before.  In 
twenty-four  of  the  thirty  States  which  elected  gov- 
ernors last  November,  the  Democratic  candidates 
ran  ahead  of  Bryan,  some  of  them  by  many  thou- 
sands. The  aggregate  vote  for  his  party's  candi- 
dates for  governor  in  those  thirty  States  exceeded 
his  vote  in  the  same  States  by  nearly  half  a  mil- 
lion. The  figures  also  illustrate  the  Democratic 
dilemma.  Outside  of  the  Southern  and  two  or 
three  of  the  newer  Western  States,  the  dominant 
radicals  can  hope  to  win  only  by  putting  forward, 
and  themselves  supporting,  candidates  acceptable 
to  the  moderates.  The  moderates,  on  the  other 
hand,  even  if  they  should  regain  control,  could 
not  reasonably  expect  to  win  outside  of  the  South 
except,  possibly,  in  a  few  States  of  the  East  where 
they  are  strongest.  Under  Cleveland,  the  Demo- 
cratic party  made  great  gains  in  New  England.  In 
1890,  an  actual  majority  of  the  Congressmen 
elected  in  New  England  were  Democrats.  Were 
the  party  again  united  under  a  leadership  like 

170 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

Cleveland's,  and  were  the  tariff  the  issue,  Massa- 
chusetts would  to-day  be  a  doubtful  State.  But 
Cleveland  is  gone,  and  the  young  William  E. 
Russell,  whom  the  auguries  of  happier  years 
had  seemed  to  proclaim  his  successor,  went  before 
him  to  the  grave.  Under  its  present  leadership, 
barring  almost  inconceivable  Republican  follies 
or  sins,  the  party  can  look  for  nothing  in  the 
East  but  sporadic  local  triumphs,  won  on  local 
issues.  Its  sole  and  none  too  robust  hope  must 
remain  what  it  was  in  the  recent  campaign:  to 
keep  the  South  for  a  base,  and  make  gains  in  the 
West. 

Its  chances  in  the  West  would  be  better  if,  in 
the  recent  contests  of  the  two  great  Republican 
factions,  fortune  had  favored  the  losing  side.  I 
will  use  the  terms  "conservative"  and  "progress- 
ive" to  designate  these  two  factions,  as  best  corre- 
sponding to  the  terms  "  moderate  "and  "radicals," 
which  I  have  applied  to  the  Democratic  factions. 
The  division  among  the  Republicans  is,  no  doubt, 
somewhat  less  clearly  marked  than  that  among  the 
Democrats,  but  it  is  not  less  real,  and  for  the  time 
being  it  is  more  important.  It  is  roughly  com- 

171 


PRESIDENT   TAFTS    OPPORTUNITY 

parable  with  the  division  of  the  English  Conserva- 
tive party  into  Tories  and  Unionists. 

The  conservative  Republicans  stand  for  the  rights 
of  property  —  perhaps  it  would  not  be  unfair  to 
say,  for  wealth  —  with  a  singleness  of  purpose  and 
animus  hardly  to  be  matched  by  the  most  con- 
servative group  in  any  one  of  the  party  systems 
of  older  countries ;  for  we  have  neither  an  estab- 
lished church  nor  an  aristocracy  of  blood  to  inspire 
another  kind  of  conservatism.  Like  the  moderate 
Democrats,  they  are  strongest  in  the  East,  but  they 
are  almost  equally  strong  in  the  older  States  of  the 
West  —  the  two  quarters,  it  should  be  observed, 
where  the  party  also  is  strongest. 

The  progressive  Republicans,  on  the  other  hand, 
are  strongest  in  that  farther  West,  which,  through 
the  ascendancy  of  the  radicals  in  the  Democratic 
party,  has  become,  with  certain  of  the  Border 
States  —  Maryland,  Delaware,  and  Kentucky  — 
the  true  battle-ground  in  national  contests.  Of 
the  four  old  "pivotal "  States,  three  —  Connecti- 
cut, New  York,  and  New  Jersey — are  under  pres- 
ent conditions  safely  Republican ;  only  the  fourth, 
Indiana,  remains  at  all  doubtful.  The  creed  of 

172 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

the  progressives  is  nowhere  fully  and  clearly  for- 
mulated; but  they  stand  for  a  strong  reaction 
against  that  complacency  with  private  and  corpo- 
rate greed  into  which  the  party  fell  so  soon  after 
the  Civil  War.  Like  the  Democratic  radicals,  they 
have  felt,  and  still  feel,  the  impulse  of  Populism ; 
they  have  many  former  Populists  in  their  ranks. 
Some  of  their  leaders,  such  as  Cummins  and  La 
Follette,  seem  really  to  have  more  in  common 
with  Bryan  than  with  Republicans  like  Aldrich 
and  Cannon.  Their  two  most  distinctive  depar- 
tures from  the  once  orthodox  Republican  attitude 
are  their  demands  for  firmer  control  and  closer 
regulation  of  corporations  and  for  a  more  liberal 
tariff  policy. 

Notwithstanding  President  Roosevelt's  avoid- 
ance of  the  tariff  issue,  he  made  himself  the  leader 
of  the  progressive  faction;  and  he  made  it  the 
dominant  faction.  We  can  hardly  question  any 
longer  the  immediate  political  expediency  of  his 
course.  To  his  astuteness,  hardly  less  than  to  the 
folly  of  the  Democrats  and  the  incompetence  of 
their  present  leaders,  his  party  owes  the  new  grant 
of  power  which  it  has  won,  contrary  to  all  pre- 

'73 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S   OPPORTUNITY 

cedents,  in  the  midst  of  an  industrial  depression 
following  a  financial  panic.  I  will  not  say  that 
President  Roosevelt  should  not  have  credit  for 
something  better  than  mere  astuteness.  His  silence 
on  the  tariff,  particularly  in  view  of  McKinley's 
remarkable  last  speech  at  Buffalo,  is  hard  to  con- 
done; but  his  insistent  demand  that  the  great  com- 
binations of  capital  shall  obey  the  laws,  violently 
as  he  sometimes  made  it,  crude  as  were  some  of 
his  specific  proposals,  was  not  merely  popular,  it 
was  right.  Had  he,  on  the  other  hand,  allied  him- 
self with  the  conservatives,  and  ignored  the  outcry 
against  the  abuses  of  corporate  power,  his  party 
would  no  doubt  have  had  a  heartier  support  both 
from  ultra-conservative  Republicans  and  from 
the  most  conservative  element  among  the  mod- 
erate Democrats  ;  but  he  would  have  driven  thou- 
sands of  progressive  Republicans,  particularly  in 
the  doubtful  States  of  the  West,  out  of  the  party, 
and  he  would  have  made  it  well-nigh  impossible 
for  moderate  Democrats  to  come  into  it. 

The  victory  to  which  he  led  the  progressives 
was,  however,  by  no  means  complete.  Cannon  is 
still  Speaker,  Aldrich  still  leader  of  the  Senate, 

174 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S   OPPORTUNITY 

Sherman  is  Vice-President.  It  is  idle  to  fancy  that 
the  great  interests  against  which  the  progressives 
have  made  war  will  not  always  have  strong  repre- 
sentation in  public  life.  The  new  Administration 
faces  the  same  four  —  or,  if  we  count  the  inde- 
pendents, the  same  five  —  political  groups  with 
which  its  predecessor  had  to  deal. 

Should  President  Taft  turn  to  mere  compro- 
mise and  conciliation,  he  may  leave  them  much  as 
they  are.  Should  he  prove,  notwithstanding  the  ear- 
lier portents,  at  heart  a  reactionary,and  the  conserv- 
atives, strengthened  by  his  favor,  come  into  their 
old  ascendancy,  the  opposition  will  win  recruits 
among  the  progressive  Republicans,  the  moderate 
Democrats  will  again  waver  back  toward  their  old 
party  standard,  and  many  independents  will  go 
with  them.  A  fresh  Democratic  opportunity  will 
be  created,  and  perhaps,  after  so  long  chastening, 
the  party  will  be  wise  enough,  by  turning  to  old 
tenets  and  new  leaders,  to  seize  it.  Should  the  Re- 
publican reaction  go  far  enough,  it  might  even 
bring  victory  within  reach  of  the  opposition  as 
it  is. 

The  third  course  open  to  the  Administration 

'75 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S   OPPORTUNITY 

is  that  which  all  signs  have  indicated  that  the 
President  is  minded  to  take.  If  he  continues  to 
insist,  less  violently  than  President  Roosevelt,  but 
not  less  firmly,  that  the  corporations  and  "  com- 
binations of  corporations  "  shall  obey  the  laws, 
and  goes  on  carefully  perfecting  the  laws  which 
aim  to  control  them,  he  will  hold  the  progres- 
sives of  his  own  party;  and  if,  in  addition,  he 
proves  sincere  and  determined,  and  carries  his 
party  with  him,  in  the  effort  to  squeeze  the  sheer 
robbery  out  of  the  tariff  schedules,  even  though 
the  protection,  properly  so-called,  remains,  he 
will  win  over  many  moderate  Democrats,  and  he 
will  commend  himself  to  the  independents.  Of 
course,  he  will  not  please  the  conservatives  —  the 
Aldrich-Cannon  Republicans.  They  will  fight 
such  a  policy  ceaselessly  and  resourcefully,  and  the 
great  interests  they  represent  will  support  them. 
But  they  will  fight  inside  the  party  lines ;  if  de- 
feated, there  is  no  other  party  to  which  they  can 
turn.  In  this  way,  granting  ultimate^victory  to  the 
progressives,  they  may  become,  in  the  actual 
working  of  the  Government  at  Washington,  a 
sort  of  Center,  with  conservatives  of  their  own 

176 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

party  constituting  the  Right,  and  the  Democrats, 
under  radical  control,  the  Left. 

But  in  this  forecast  I  have  purposely  omitted 
to  consider  a  factor  which,  at  present,  makes 
against  it  —  which,  indeed,  makes  against  any 
conformity  of  our  political  life  to  the  normal 
usage  and  development  of  representative  govern- 
ments. Radical  democracy  in  America  draws  its 
inspiration  from  the  West,  but  the  base  and  strong- 
hold of  the  Democratic  party,  whether  its  policy 
is  radical  or  moderate,  is  still  not  the  West, but  the 
South.  If,  therefore,  I  have  thought  that  the  pres- 
ent Administration  may  alter  the  composition 
of  our  parties,  it  is  partly  because  I  have  thought 
that  it  may  also  alter  their  geographical  align- 
ment: because  it  may,  if  it  will,  bring  us  to  the 
end  —  at  any  rate,  to  the  beginning  of  the  end  — 
of  the  South's  political  solidarity. 

This  is  no  new  hope.  On  the  contrary,  it  has 
been  so  often  entertained,  and  so  often  disap- 
pointed, that  one  must  give  better  reasons  for 
entertaining  it  again  than  the  mere  fact  of  Re- 
publican gains  in  the  Border  States.  From  1892 
to  1908,  the  figures  do  show  a  marked  progress 

177 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S   OPPORTUNITY 

of  the  Republicans  southward.  West  Virginia  be- 
came first  occasionally  and  then  steadily  Republi- 
can. Maryland,  Kentucky,  and  Missouri  have  all 
gone  Republican  in  certain  elections,  and  must 
now  be  accounted  doubtful.  But  the  industrial  de- 
velopment of  West  Virginia  has  so  changed  its 
population  that  it  is  no  longer  a  Southern  State. 

Nor  can  the  other  three  stand  for  Southern  con- 

i 

ditions.  In  1904,  when  Missouri  went  Republi- 
can, and  Kentucky  and  Maryland  divided  their 
electoral  votes,  Mississippi  increased  her  Demo- 
cratic majority.  We  cannot  attribute  to  this  polit- 
ical change  of  heart  in  the  Border  States  quite  the 
same  significance  it  would  have  in  any  one  of  the 
old  Confederate  States.  It  may  well  be  argued  that 
in  the  former  the  interests  which  they  share  with 
the  North  have  simply  outweighed  those  that 
they  share  with  the  South.  But  were  Alabama 
and  Georgia  to  go  Republican,  we  should  feel  that 
the  white  people  of  those  States  had  made  up 
their  minds  that  they  can  vote  a  Republican  ticket 
without  endangering  that  to  preserve  which  they 
have  so  long  denied  themselves  the  privilege  of 
full  political  independence. 

178 


PRESIDENT    TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

The  figures  of  the  election  last  autumn  in  the 
distinctively  Southern  States  are  thus  far  more 
significant  than  those  of  recent  elections  in  the 
Border  States.  They  showed  an  increased  Repub- 
lican vote  in  every  one  of  the  eleven  States  of  the 
Confederacy,  the  gains  varying  from  a  few  hun- 
dreds in  Mississippi  and  South  Carolina,  where  vir- 
tually no  Republican  party  existed,  to  more  than 
13,000  in  Tennessee,  more  than  16,000  in  Geor- 
gia, and  nearly  34,000  in  North  Carolina;  this 
last  being  decidedly  the  greatest  gain,  absolutely 
as  well  as  relatively,  that  the  party  made  in  any 
State  of  the  Union. 

The  figures  are  really  much  more  significant 
than  they  seem.  In  none  of  these  States  do  more 
than  a  few  thousand  negroes  go  to  the  polls.  As 
the  Democratic  primaries  have  long  constituted 
the  real  elections,  great  numbers  of  whites  also 
neglect  to  go  to  the  polls  on  election  days.  These 
gains  were  made,  therefore,  in  a  total  vote  far  less 
than  would  have  been  cast  by  the  same  popula- 
tion in  the  North ;  and  they  are  gains  of  white 
votes.  Probably  fewer  negroes  voted  for  Taft  in 
1908  than  for  Roosevelt  in  1904.  Some,  mindful 

179 


PRESIDENT    TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

of  Brownsville,  voted  against  him.  Of  the  114,- 
ooo  Republican  votes  cast  in  North  Carolina,  cer- 
tainly more  than  1 00,000  were  cast  by  white  men. 
Although  the  National  Committee  refused  to 
appropriate  a  cent  to  that  State,  a  change  of  less 
than  1 2,000  votes  would  have  given  it  to  Taft. 
A  change  of  9000  votes  would  have  given  him 
Tennessee.  In  Arkansas  and  Georgia,  also,  the 
Republicans  not  only  increased  their  own  vote, 
but  cut  deep  into  the  Democratic  majorities. 

Clearly,  it  would  seem,  these  States  are  open  to 
Republican  invasion.  How  can  the  Republicans 
best  invade  them  ?  We  can  approach  an  answer 
by  seeking  the  causes  of  the  change  already  come 
about. 

There  have  already  occurred,  since  the  South- 
ern people  regained  control  of  their  own  affairs, 
two  secessions  from  the  Democratic  party  in  the 
South.  First  came  the  Farmers'  Alliance-Popu- 
list movement,  in  the  late  eighties.  An  outcome 
of  hard  times,  and  Western  in  its  origin,  that 
movement  took  in  the  South  the  form  of  a  rebel- 
lion against  the  aristocratic  element  which  had 
ruled  before  the  Civil  War,  and  which,  with  the 

1 80 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S   OPPORTUNITY 

undoing  of  Reconstruction,  had  again  come  into 
power.  It  was  also  a  sign  of  growing  discontent 
with  the  methods  used  to  keep  the  mass  of  the 
negroes,  not  then  legally  disfranchised,  from  vot- 
ing. It  came  suddenly,  and  quickly  developed  a 
dangerous  strength.  Reuben  F.  Kolb,  the  Popu- 
list candidate  for  governor  of  Alabama  in  1890, 
was  not  improbably  elected,  though  never  seated. 
In  North  Carolina,  a  fusion  of  Populists  and  Re- 
publicans won  in  1894  and  1896,  and  sent  J.  C. 
Pritchard  and  Marion  Butler  to  the  Senate.  Ex- 
cept in  South  Carolina,  where  Tillman  and  his 
following  had  at  the  start  captured  the  Demo- 
cratic organization,  alliances  of  Republicans  and 
Populists  prevailed  throughout  the  South  until 
1896,  when  the  Democrats  came  out  for  free  silver 
and  the  Republicans  for  the  gold  standard.  After 
that  year,  the  Democratic  party  in  the  South,  as 
elsewhere,  gradually  reabsorbed  the  Populists  by 
adopting  most  of  their  platform. 

But  this  caused  a  second  secession,  that  of  the 
moderates,  the  Cleveland  men,  who  would  not 
support  Bryan  and  free  silver.  These  men  re- 
turned to  the  party  in  1 904.  That  was  one  reason 

181 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S   OPPORTUNITY 

why  Roosevelt  did  not  make  a  better  showing  in 
the  South.  But  with  Bryan  again  leading  the 
Democrats,  and  a  progressive  leading  the  Republi- 
cans, they  have  again,  and  in  far  larger  numbers, 
asserted  their  independence.  To  the  discontent 
with  the  Democratic  candidate  and  platform  there 
is  now  added  a  growing  disgust  with  the  party  it- 
self, which  is  regarded  as  unfit  for  power,  and  a 
growing  hope  in  the  Republican  party. 

It  is,  of  course,  essential,  if  the  South  is  to  give 
up  its  solidarity,  that  the  Republican  party  shall 
commend  itself  to  a  majority  of  the  voters  in  some 
Southern  State  or  States.  It  cannot  ask  Southern 
men  to  vote  for  policies  they  disapprove  merely 
because  it  is  desirable  to  have  a  live  Republican 
party  in  the  South,  nor  even  because,  by  turning 
Republican,  they  can  win  for  the  South  a  stronger 
voice  in  all  national  affairs.  It  cannot  ask  them  to 
do  more  than  vote  as  they  believe.  But  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  while  the  progressive  faction  controls 
the  Republican  party,  and  the  radical  faction 
the  Democratic,  the  drift  of  Southern  opinion  is 
clearly  and  strongly  Republican.  This  drift  was 
arrested  in  1 904  by  the  nomination  of  Parker  and 

182 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S   OPPORTUNITY 

by  the  feeling  against  President  Roosevelt  be- 
cause he  had  had  Principal  Washington  to  dinner, 
had  appointed  Crum  Collector  at  Charleston,  and 
had  closed  the  post-office  at  Indianola.  It  would 
probably  be  again  arrested  if  either  the  moderates 
should  regain  control  in  the  Democratic  party  or 
the  conservatives  in  the  Republican.  Were  both 
these  things  to  happen,  the  tide  would  doubtless 
turn  the  other  way.  If,  however,  present  tenden- 
cies shall  continue  to  prevail  in  both  parties,  it 
is  only  a  question  of  time  when  in  more  than  one 
Southern  State  those  who  in  their  hearts  favor  the 
Republican  party  will  be — if,  indeed,  they  are 
not  already — the  majority.  But  that,  unfortu- 
nately, is  not  enough.  It  is  not  enough  that  South- 
erners should  change  their  faith;  they  must  be 
persuaded  that  it  is  safe  for  them  to  vote  as  they 
believe. 

There  is  no  better  way  to  persuade  them  that  it 
is  safe  -  -  I  doubt,  indeed,  if  there  is  any  other  way 
—  than  to  make  it  safe.  I  believe  that  the  wisest 
course  now  open  to  the  Republican  party — and 
the  right  course — is  to  consent,  candidly  and  un- 
equivocally, that  it  shall  be  safe. 

183 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S   OPPORTUNITY 

That  it  has  substantially  so  consented,  ever  since 
the  last  Force  Bill  was  killed,  is  what  has  made 
possible  its  recent  gains.  These  became  possible, 
not  in  spite  of  the  laws  which  operate  to  disfran- 
chise the  mass  of  the  negroes,  but  because  of  those 
laws,  and  because  the  Republicans  had  virtually 
accepted  them.  President  Roosevelt  had  accepted 
them  in  a  published  letter,  declaring  that  no  one 
of  consequence  seriously  considers  punishing  the 
South  for  passing  them  so  long  as  they  are  fairly 
enforced.  The  Supreme  Court  had  refused  to  de- 
clare them  unconstitutional.  Congress  had  acqui- 
esced by  inaction. 

This  attitude  of  the  three  departments  of  the 
Government,  all  three  being  in  the  hands  of 
the  Republicans,  has  encouraged  many  Southern 
voters  to  disregard  mere  platform  demands  and 
threats.  But  there  are  still  many  other  Southern- 
ers who  feel  differently  ;  and  the  insincerity  is  in 
itself  a  thing  to  reprobate,  not  to  condone.  The 
time  has  come  for  plain  speaking  on  this  whole 
subject.  The  Southern  people  will  not  consent 
that  their  suffrage  laws  shall  be  dictated,  directly 
or  indirectly,  from  without;  and  I  believe  the 

184 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S   OPPORTUNITY 

best  Northern  opinion  also  to  be  that  interference 
from  without  works  more  harm  than  good.  If  it 
did  not  succeed  when  the  Southern  people  were 
beaten,  impoverished,  apparently  helpless,  is  it 
likely  to  succeed  now,  when  they  are  erect,  pros- 
perous, in  full  control  of  their  own  affairs  ?  Forty- 
two  years  ago,  overriding  President  Johnson,  and 
disregarding  the  policy  of  Lincoln,  Congress  did 
all  that  could  be  done  to  force  the  negroes  into  the 
electorates  of  the  Southern  States.  For  ten  hor- 
rible years  the  National  Government  bent  its  vast 
strength  to  the  task  of  keeping  them  there.  Yet 
to-day  there  is  nothing  gained  beyond  the  pro- 
posal of  Lincoln  in  1864,  in  his  well-known  let- 
ter to  Governor  Hahn  of  Louisiana:  "I  barely 
suggest  for  your  private  consideration  whether 
some  of  the  colored  people  may  not  be  let  in  — 
as,  for  instance,  the  very  intelligent,  and  especially 
those  who  have  fought  gallantly  in  our  ranks." 
One  of  the  few  things  which  seem  to  be  certain 
about  the  race  problem  is  that  the  rest  of  the 
country  cannot  control,  however  it  may  disturb, 
the  political  relations  of  the  two  races  in  the 
South. 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S   OPPORTUNITY 

Should  the  Republican  party  again  attempt 
what  it  cannot  hope  to  accomplish,  it  would 
merely  drive  the  Southern  white  voters  back  into 
the  solidarity  they  seem  ready  to  abandon.  If  it 
continues  to  threaten  in  platforms  what  it  does  not 
mean  to  attempt,  it  will  probably  mislead  many 
of  both  races,  to  the  good  of  neither,  and  may  in 
the  end  disgust  both.  By  honesty  and  candor,  it  can 
permit  the  stronger,  and  may  perhaps  lead  the  en- 
franchised members  of  the  weaker  also,  to  divide 
freely,  like  other  Americans,  according  to  their 
convictions,  at  the  polls.  Since  whatever  of  the 
substance  of  political  power  black  men  now  have 
in  the  South  they  have  by  the  consent  of  the 
Southern  white  men,  they  would  lose  little  by  the 
change;  and  there  remains  the  untried  hope  of 
their  wisest  leader  that  they  may  gain  from  the 
unforced  sense  of  justice  of  the  white  race  what 
its  stubborn  strength  would  never  yield  to  com- 
pulsion. 

But  there  is  more  for  the  Republican  party  to 
do,  if  it  would  rise  to  its  opportunity  in  the  South, 
than  merely  to  cease  from  this  insincerity.  It  is 
not  enough  merely  to  induce  Southern  white  men 

186 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

to  vote  Republican  in  national  elections.  When 
they  do  that,  they  are  debarred,  not  only  by  party 
law  but  by  a  public  opinion  which  on  this  point 
is  peculiarly  strong  in  the  South,  from  the  Demo- 
cratic primaries.  Yet  in  too  many  Southern  States 
mere  self-respect  has  hitherto  been  enough  to  keep 
such  men  out  of  the  organizations  which  repre- 
sent the  Republican  party.  These  must  simply  be 
reconstituted  before  Southern  white  men  of  the 
class  which  the  party  has  the  best  chance  of  win- 
ning will  consent  to  join  it. 

Here  is  perhaps  the  most  difficult  practical 
aspect  of  the  situation ;  and  here  the  task  which 
most  clearly  devolves  upon  the  President  in  his 
capacity  of  party  leader.  The  power  long  pos- 
sessed by  small  groups  of  office-brokers  and  ven- 
dors of  delegates  in  national  conventions  must  be 
put  into  better  hands,  and  the  organization  made, 
as  the  phrase  is,  "  respectable."  The  new  recruits, 
drawn  largely  from  the  higher  walks  of  Southern 
life,  and  the  men  who  have  been  Republicans  in 
years  when  the  term  carried  reproach,  must  be 
brought  into  some  kind  of  fellowship.  Offices  and 
honors  must  be  fairly  distributed.  Were  there  no 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

Federal  offices  to  distribute,  the  transformation, 
as  Mr.  Taft  himself  once  suggested,  might  be 
easier.  For  the  transformation  will  not  be  ac- 
complished until  victory  at  the  polls,  not  recog- 
nition from  Washington,  shall  become  the  goal 
of  party  activity. 

To  President  Roosevelt,  notwithstanding  what 
I  cannot  help  thinking  the  serious  and  costly  mis- 
takes in  his  Southern  policy,  we  must  give  credit 
for  blazing  the  way  for  this  enterprise  of  revital- 
izing his  party  in  the  South.1  Before  he  went  into 
office,  he  had  discussed  the  situation  with  South- 
erners of  the  best  class,  and  had  come  to  feel  that 
Southern  people  had  a  real  grievance  in  the  un- 
representative character  —  and  none  too  seldom 
the  bad  character  —  of  holders  of  Federal  offices 
in  the  South.  He  accordingly  made  up  his  mind 
to  appoint  Democrats  freely  where  he  could  not 
get  good  Republicans.  This  he  repeatedly  did,  to 

1  I  wish  to  make  this  acknowledgment  the  more  pointed  because  I  am 
satisfied  that  in  an  article  published  during  the  campaign  of  1 908,  having 
been  somewhat  misled  by  a  certain  published  statement  about  the  so- 
called  "referee  system,"  and  by  the  strong  feeling  of  certain  Southern 
Republicans  against  that  system,  and  the  article  itself  having  been  written 
under  peculiar  circumstances  which  denied  me  all  opportunity  to  verify 
or  correct  it,  I  did  President  Roosevelt  some  injustice  in  this  regard. 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

the  improvement  of  the  public  service ;  and  by 
this  policy  he  fostered  a  friendlier  feeling  toward 
his  party.  Another  resolve  he  made  was  to  appoint 
comparatively  few  negroes  to  office,  and  those,  if 
possible,  of  the  better  class ;  and  this  also  was  wise. 
Unfortunately,  however,  he  chose  Charleston  — 
of  all  places  —  for  one  such  appointment  to  a  con- 
spicuous office  ;  and  this,  with  his  "  door  of  hope" 
letter,  and  the  other  incidents  I  have  mentioned, 
exasperated  the  whites,  aroused  wild  expectations 
among  the  negroes,  provoked  an  outburst  of  race 
feeling,  and  deprived  him,  for  a  time,  of  the  liking 
of  the  Southern  people,  whom  he  had  at  first 
much  attracted. 

His  policy  required  him  to  disregard  the  advice 
of  his  party's  committees  in  the  South  when  he 
felt  that  he  could  not  trust  them  to  name  good 
men;  yet  recommendations  from  some  source  he 
must  have.  He  accordingly  had  recourse  to  the 
much-discussed  "  referees."  He  did  not,  as  has 
been  commonly  supposed,  invent  the  "referee 
system"  of  appointments.  More  than  one  of  his 
predecessors,  in  making  appointments  in  States 
that  had  no  Senators  or  Representatives  of  the 

180 


PRESIDENT   TAFTS    OPPORTUNITY 

President's  party,  had  resorted  to  advisers  of  their 
own  choosing.  Mark  Hanna,  in  nominating  Mc- 
Kinley,  had  built  up  a  "  machine  "  in  the  South, 
and  the  heads  of  this  had  become,  under  Mc- 
Kinley,  the  "referees"  concerning  appointments 
in  their  several  States.  To  these  men  President 
Roosevelt  also  turned,  and  he  continued  the  prac- 
tice, although  in  some  instances  he  changed  the 
referees  themselves.  In  Mississippi,  he  made  a 
Democrat  the  referee ;  in  many  other  instances  he 
consulted  Democrats  about  appointments.  All  this 
made,  on  the  whole,  for  better  appointments ;  but 
it  had  other  results  not  so  acceptable.  It  might 
have  been  foreseen,  one  would  think,  that  to  the 
keen-scented  hunger  of  office-seekers  the  true 
sources  of  presidential  favor  would  not  remain 
long  hidden.  It  did  not,  for  instance,  long  remain 
hidden  that  a  Democrat  appointed  to  the  Federal 
bench  in  Alabama  owed  his  appointment  to  Prin- 
cipal Washington,  or  that  the  same  adviser  had 
actually  named  the  referee  for  Mississippi ;  and  the 
effect  on  Southern  public  opinion  was  not  good. 
The  referees  found  it  easy,  when  they  so  desired, 
to  make  themselves  the  masters  of  the  Republi- 

190 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

can  organizations  in  their  respective  States;  for 
these  turned  to  whatever  power  dispensed  the 
offices,  as  a  sunflower  turns  to  the  sun.  It  has  even 
been  charged  that  in  Mississippi  the  referee  used 
his  power — as  he  could,  since  many  of  the  ap- 
pointments made  on  his  recommendation^were  of 
Democrats  —  to  aid  in  a  contest  for  control  of 
the  Democratic  party.  He  is  also  blamed  for  the 
unsatisfactory  outcome  of  the  Indianola  incident, 
because  of  the  advice  he  gave  the  President.  In 
general,  since  the  referees  were  responsible  only 
to  the  President,  their  setting  up,  however  good 
the  motive,  and  however  the  device  may  have  im- 
proved the  character  of  appointments,  certainly 
did  not  give  to  the  Republican  party  the  vitality 
and  independence  which  it  so  sadly  lacked.  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  abandoned  the  system  some  time 
before  he  went  out  of  office.  It  is  quite  possible 
that  the  standard  of  appointments  to  Federal  offi- 
ces will  somewhat  decline  if  the  party  commit- 
tees are  left  to  make  the  recommendations ;  but  in 
the  end  the  South  will  be  the  gainer  if  the  change 
shall  prove  a  sign  of  the  coming  to  life  of  the 
party  behind  the  committees. 

191 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S   OPPORTUNITY 

But  the  Administration,  if  it  would  contribute 
all  it  can  to  this  consummation,  must  go  further 
still.  It  must  see  to  it  that  the  men  at  the  head  of 
the  Southern  machines  shall  realize  that  their  old 
occupation  —  the  getting  together  of  pliable  dele- 
gations to  Republican  national  conventions  —  is 
gone  forever.  So  long  as  this  practice  continues, 
there  will  exist,  for  the  leaders  of  the  party  in  the 
South,  whether  referees  or  committeemen,  and 
for  the  Northern  managers  in  closest  touch  with 
them  also,  a  motive  to  keep  things  as  they  have 
been. 

Here,  it  may  be  thought,  is  too  much  said  of 
the  South  in  a  survey  of  the  entire  national  field. 
But  those  who  know  the  true  history  of  the  Re- 
publican party  in  recent  years  will  hardly  make 
that  criticism.  Nor  is  it  just,  if  the  view  here  taken 
of  the  present  state  of  parties  throughout  the  na- 
tion is  correct.  In  that  view,  the  rise  of  the  Repub- 
lican party  in  the  South  may  be  compared,  in  its 
potential  effects  upon  our  national  politics,  to  the 
emergence  of  Japan  into  the  field  of  international 
politics.  The  entrance  of  a  new  power  may  com- 
pel realignments  of  the  old,  with  new  alliances, 

192 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

new  policies ;  it  may  well  mark  the  beginning  of 
a  new  epoch  in  our  political  life. 

To  welcome  the  new  is  not  to  revile  the  old.  If 
the  South  should  to-morrow  drop  her  guard,  and 
throw  away  her  shield,  the  act  would  imply  no 
self-condemnation  for  the  response  she  made  to 
the  desperate  conditions  which  she  faced  forty 
years  ago.  If  it  be  said  that  mere  sentiment  has 
governed  her  course,  the  answer  is  ready :  mere 
sentiment  is  a  nobler  motive  than  mere  self-inter- 
est. But  sentiment  has  not  been  all :  far  from  it. 
Interests  more  precious  than  are  commonly  de- 
bated in  politics  have  seemed  to  force  her  into  po- 
litical isolation.  Glorious  as  freedom  is,  it  has  often 
in  history  been  accounted  noble  for  men  to  deny 
themselves  its  fullness,  and  live  withdrawn  from 
power,  and  cabined  from  their  fellows'  emulations, 
when  they  have  felt  themselves  custodians  of  some 
priceless  heritage  of  principle ;  and  this,  beyond 
question,  has  been  the  South's  own  conception  of 
her  long  recalcitrancy. 

Yet  it  has  cost  her  dear ;  and  she,  most  of  all, 
should  welcome  the  new  day  —  if  this  brightness  is 
indeed  the  dawn.  Her  best  minds  have  long  yearned 

'93 


PRESIDENT   TAFT'S    OPPORTUNITY 

* 

forward  to  it,  as  to  the  day  when  they  might  keep 

faith  with  their  country  without  disloyalty  to  their 
homes,  to  their  race.  Nor  do  they  of  that  other 
race,  because  of  whom  there  has  been  this  long 
tribulation,  desire  that  the  new  day  shall  not  dawn. 
Their  full  hope,  and  the  full  hope  of  their  cham- 
pions, is  yet  denied.  We  have  not  gone  beyond 
the  modest  hope  of  Lincoln.  But  at  least  that 
modest  and  reasonable  hope  is  accomplished ;  and 
this  achievement  may  prove  the  safe  foundation 
of  a  greater  hope.  It  will  at  least  avail  to  fulfill 
Lincoln's  prophecy.  It  will  serve — in  his  own 
deep  phrase — "to  keep  the  jewel  of  liberty  in  the 
family  of  freedom. " 

1909. 


GREETINGS   TO   THE   PRESIDENTS 


G 


TO  THEODORE  ROOSEVELT 

MARCH  4,    1909 

OOD-MORNING,  Mr.  President!  and, 


yes  —  au  revoir!  though  not  good-bye ! 

It  is  hard  going  to  the  side  lines.  You  yourself 
never  willingly  made  way  for  any  one — except, 
perhaps,  your  successor.  We  wish  we  could  leave 
out  the  "  perhaps."  But  we  are  speaking  candidly 
— so  candidly  that  we  will  admit  we  find  it  hard 
to  believe  that  even  you  never  have  longed  for 
that  which  some  often  supremely  desire  —  ob- 
scurity; some,  indeed,  so  intensely  that  they  would 
not  envy  a  lion  his  morsel. 

The  "perhaps  "  must  stay,  and  with  it  a  thou- 
sand doubts.  This  question  of  what  sort  of  man 
you  are  at  heart  has  been,  for  years  now,  probably 
the  commonest  single  topic  of  conversation  in 
America.  How  you  have  become  so  conspicuous, 
so  unavoidable,  we  think  we  can  see.  Decidedly 
you  are  not  lazy.  The  thought  of  that  incessant, 
demoniac  energy  of  yours  is  to  the  indolent  and 

*97 


GREETINGS   TO   THE   PRESIDENTS 

ease-loving  among  us  like  a  lash.  And  in  all  your 
activity  there  is  the  instinct  of  success.  Although 
you  did  not  shine  at  school  or  college,  you  won 
from  youth  precisely  the  kind  of  training  that 
counts  in  getting  on.  The  very  swiftness  of  your 
activities  explains  their  success.  And  ^this  goes 
deeper  than  it  sounds.  You  act  on  first  impulses, 
after  a  quick  glance  at  situations,  but  with  no  more 
pondering  than  the  average  man  will  give.  You 
thus,  as  a  rule,  hit  upon  courses  which  the  aver- 
age man — particularly  the  average  man  of  affairs 
— is  likely  to  approve.  Of  course,  you  have  not 
time  to  ponder ;  but  neither  is  that  your  bent.  No 
act  of  yours  has  the  quality  of  a  work  of  patient 
art — as  so  many  of  Lincoln's  had ;  nor  has  your 
speech  the  sweetness  of  meditation.  Both  suit 
newspapers  better  than  they  will  suit  books ;  but 
your  countrymen  read  newspapers  more  than  they 
read  books. 

This  quality  of  your  acts  we  cannot  condemn. 
No  mortal  could  give  finish  to  all  you  do.  But  we 
do  condemn  the  way  you  belabor  us  who  do  not 
totally  approve —  and  praise — all  you  do.  That  is 
the  most  exasperating  of  your  injustices.  You  tell 


GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

us  vehemently  how  you  and  your  friends  value 
their  honor  above  all  things,  and  yet  you  freely 
and  violently  assail  the  good  names  of  other  men. 
Many  you  denounce  for  lying ;  yet  it  is  the  sim- 
ple truth  that  thousands  of  your  countrymen  ques- 
tion your  veracity. 

For  a  while  success  threw  such  a  glamour  over 
you  that  we  could  only  think  of  you  as  paragon 
or  as  arch-villain.  It  is  curious  how  that  illusion 
about  men  lifted  up  persists — when  we  know  they 
must  be  like  the  rest  of  us.  We  do  not  believe  all 
your  opponents  have  been  liars;  nor  yet  that  you 
yourself  have  been  lying  incessantly  and  con- 
sciously. It  is  plain  that  you  put  your  side  of  every- 
thing too  strongly.  A  whisper  in  the  White  House 
turns  to  thunder  out  of  doors;  but  you  have 
seemed  to  think  you  would  not  be  heard  unless 
you  shouted.  You  are  of  those  who  use  speech  as 
means  to  all  manner  of  ends.  But  even  in  this 
respect  you  may  be  a  sign  of  moral  progress ;  for 
even  in  this  respect  we  must,  we  think,  account 
you  more  scrupulous  than  Napoleon. 

You  will  not  wonder  that  we  mention  such  a 
name.  Many  will.  But  you  do  indeed  set  us  look- 

199 


GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

ing  for  European  counterparts.  Asa  spectacle  your 
career  could  stand  a  European,  even  an  Asiatic, 
setting.  In  this  you  may  have  served  us  well.  Eu- 
rope seems  to  find  you  like  her  own  rulers,  to 
understand  and  respect  your  demonstrations  of  our 
strength.  Nevertheless,  you  have  more  in  com- 
mon with  Andrew  Jackson,  of  Tennessee,  than 
with  Czar  or  Emperor.  He,  too,  you  remember, 
was  violent  in  loyalties  and  hatreds.  He,  too,  kept 
his  prestige  to  the  end,  and  named  his  successor. 
Of  course  you  are  more  than  the  frontiersman. 
City-bred  and  college-bred  and  traveled,  you  range 
beyond  his  narrow  ken  —  and  boldly  essay  full 
citizenship  of  every  province  your  mind  explores. 
But  if  you  are  more  than  he  could  be,  may  you  not 
also  be  less?  Can  you  match  his  sincerities  —  or 
his  manners? 

He  was  not  a  politician ;  and  we  long  thought 
you  were  not.  Now  we  know  better.  In  politics, 
as  in  all  things,  you  choose  to  win,  with  such 
devices  as  winning  demands.  You  are  right,  we 
suppose,  if  life  is.  Going  below  these  complex 
relations  of  men  does  not  bring  us  to  any  coun- 
tenancing by  nature  of  abstentions  in  strife.  You 

200 


GREETINGS   TO   THE   PRESIDENTS 

despise  the  negative  heroisms  and  moralities ;  we 
will  not  question  whether  you  could  attain  them. 
With  your  doctrine  and  life  principle  of  self- 
assertion,  you  have  achieved  a  career  in  many 
ways  splendid  and  glorious :  we  will  not  ask  if  you 
could  have  accepted  a  martyrdom,  or  lived  through 
a  life  of  self-abnegation. 

Are  there  such  lives  ?  Sacrifice,  humility,  some- 
times seem  to  us  forms  of  self-seeking.  The 
stormiest  activity  may  be  in  truth  a  kind  of  yield- 
ing, as  when  Gladstone  in  agony  turned  from  the 
church  to  the  senate  to  work  out  a  mystical  con- 
secration. Your  ceaseless  grasping  at  every  means 
to  achievement  is  compliance;  there  is  in  it  what 
Swift  called  "the  sting  of  perishable  things."  You 
are  driven  upon  self-assertion  as  spirits  equally 
ardent  have  been  driven  to  the  cloister. 

It  is  yet  too  early  to  say  what  will  be  the  per- 
manent effect  of  your  policies  and  methods  on  our 
actual  constitution  of  government;  or  whether 
your  party  will  hold  to  the  course  you  have  set  it. 
The  old  questions  of  finance  and  the  tariff  you 
have  left  much  as  you  found  them.  A  true  politi- 
cal instinct  and  sense  of  the  movement  of  the 

201 


GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

popular  mind  turned  you  instead  to  your  resound- 
ing assault  upon  trusts,  of  which  there  is  as  yet  no 
clear  outcome.  You  are  best  out  of  doors.  Com- 
ing generations  will  have  most  cause  to  think  well 
of  you  when  they  take  thought  of  things  mate- 
rial :  of  deserts  reclaimed  and  forests  preserved, 
and  the  canal,  perhaps,  and  the  inland  waterways. 
It  is  idle  to  inquire  precisely  how  far  these  con- 
serving enterprises  are  yours.  You  have  success- 
fully appropriated  them,  as  you  successfully  ap- 
propriated certain  policies  of  the  party  opposed 
to  you.  Such  depredations  are  the  rule  in  politics. 
Avoidances  such  as  yours  of  the  tariff  are  equally 
the  rule.  You  have  accomplished  things  which 
presidents  of  the  older  school  would  not  have 
dared  attempt,  by  methods  they  could  hardly  have 
imagined ;  and  only  time  can  determine  which  of 
your  innovations  will  persist.  You  have  excelled 
rather  in  the  multitude  of  things  done  and  striven 
for  than  in  any  kind  of  forbearance.  In  this,  again, 
there  is  a  kind  of  reassurance.  Institutions  which 
can  permit  such  a  man  so  much  freedom,  and 
which  he  yet  does  not  obviously  subvert,  must 
have  their  roots  deep  in  the  popular  conscious- 

202 


GREETINGS   TO   THE   PRESIDENTS 

ness.  They  will  long  continue  to  set  bounds  to  per- 
sonal force  in  our  public  men.  You  have  possessed 
and  exercised  our  government;  you  could  not,  if 
you  had  desired  and  dared,  have  essentially  altered 
its  forms.  Willingly  or  unwillingly,  you  have  even 
respected,  the  mere  tradition  which  denied  you 
longer  possession.  What  you  have,  in  fact,  seemed 
to  demonstrate  is  that  our  system  contemplates 
energy  and  aggression  in  its  highest  office. 

Do  you  wonder  that  there  is  so  little  asperity  in 
all  this  ?  We  choose  to  be  too  serious  for  irony,  or 
for  that  ridicule  which  you  so  constantly  chal- 
lenge and  so  frenziedly  resent.  Because  it  is  the 
form  of  attack  you  resent  least  well,  we  discard  it 
— to  say  au  revoir.  We  can  think  of  no  other  pub- 
lic man  since  Andrew  Johnson  so  plainly  pervious 
to  gibes.  That  circumstance  indicates,  better,  per- 
haps, than  any  other  sign,  the  sense  of  you  which 
will  go  into  history.  It  will  leave  your  eulogists  free 
to  compare  you  with  Napoleon  and  Frederick  the 
Great.  It  will  debar  them  from  associating  you 
with  that  small  group  among  the  famous  men  of 
action  whom  a  Voltaire  or  a  Madame  de  Stae'l 
would  have  found  it  useless  to  assail,  and  who 

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GREETINGS   TO   THE   PRESIDENTS 

would  certainly  never  have  persecuted  any  man 
or  woman  for  pen-pricks.  Hampden,  we  should 
say,  was  of  that  group,  and  Lincoln,  and  General 
Lee.  For  these  were  of  those  who  have  believed 
— we  will  not  say  rightly — that  ruling  one's  own 
spirit  is  greater  than  taking  cities;  of  those  who 
practiced  the  emphasis  of  quietness.  If  you  were 
set  beside  one  of  that  group,  before  a  Greek  of 
the  time  of  Pericles,  he  would  see,  better  than  we 
your  countrymen  can,  wherein  your  success  is 
failure. 

We  make  concessions,  Mr.  President,  — and  we 
admit  doubts.  We  are  trying,  in  parting,  to  adhere 
to  an  attitude  of  sympathy.  If  we  do  not  think 
we  should  have  done  so  ill  in  your  place,  we  are 
quite  sure  we  should  not  have  done  so  well.  We 
are  willing,  if  time  shall  prove  your  champion,  to 
grow  more  and  more  reconciled  into  admiration. 
But  we  remember,  or  seem  to  remember,  a  kind 
of  charm  you  had  in  years  gone  by  which  this 
so  wonderful  fruition  of  manhood  does  not  yield ; 
and  we  recall  some  words  spoken  by  a  young 
man  as  he  parted  from  those  same  quiet  places 
where  your  own  youth  was  nurtured.  He  also  be- 

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GREETINGS   TO   THE   PRESIDENTS 

came  a  man  of  action  —  a  soldier;  he  was  the  very 
man  who  fell 

"  Tipping  with  fire  the  bolt  of  men 
That  rived  the  rebel  line  asunder." 

This  is  what  he  said :  "  Apollonius  of  Tyana  tells 
us  in  his  Travels  that  he  saw '  a  youth,  one  of  the 
blackest  of  the  Indians,  who  had  between  his  eye- 
brows a  shining  moon.  Another  youth,  named 
Memnon,  the  pupil  of  Herodes  the  Sophist,  had 
this  moon  when  he  was  young;  but  as  he  ap- 
proached to  man's  estate  its  light  grew  fainter  and 
fainter  and  finally  vanished/  The  world  should  see 
with  reverence  on  each  youth's  brow,  as  a  shining 
moon,  his  fresh  ideal.  It  should  remember  that  he 
is  already  in  the  hands  of  a  sophist  more  danger- 
ous than  Herodes,  for  that  sophist  is  himself.  It 
should  watch  lest,  from  too  early  or  exclusive  ac- 
tion, the  moon  on  his  brow,  growing  fainter  and 
fainter,  should  finally  vanish,  and,  sadder  than  all, 
should  leave  in  vanishing  no  sense  of  loss." 

And  yet  —  and  yet — au  revoir,  Mr.  President. 
Au  revoir — but  not  good-bye. 


G 


TO  WILLIAM  H.  TAFT 

MARCH  4,    1909 

OOD-MORNING,  Mr.  President. 


To  you  also  we  prefer  to  turn  with  serious 
eyes.  Solemnities  drop  less  naturally  from  our  pen, 
we  must  own,  in  this  greeting  than  in  that  tenta- 
tive farewell  we  have  just  been  pronouncing.  We 
can  imagine  you  saying  what  Charles  Surface  said 
while  Sir  Oliver  paid  his  respects  to  Brother  Jo- 
seph :  "  If  they  talk  this  way  to  Honesty,  what  will 
they  say  to  me  by  and  by  ? "  And  we  could  fall  into 
that  mood;  for,  strange  to  say,  we  seem  less  in 
doubt  about  you  at  your  coming  in  than  about  this 
other  at  his  going  out.  Certainly  you  do  not  sug- 
gest painful  reflections  on  the  mysteries  of  human 
nature  and  life  and  fate.  Rather  you  invite  to  jo- 
viality and  matter-of-fact. 

But  we  are  to  watch  your  every  act,  listen  to  all 
your  words,  to  praise  and  dispraise  you,  for  four 
years,  perhaps  for  eight.  Frankly,  we  have  much 
hope  in  you,  and  it  is  hard  to  believe  we  shall  ever 

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GREETINGS    TO   THE   PRESIDENTS 

feel  bound  to  assail  you  with  bitterness,  to  taunt,  to 
deride.  You  have  our  liking  —  in  common,  we 
think,  with  that  of  nearly  all  your  countrymen. 
But  you  know  how  hard  it  will  be  to  keep  from 
losing  this  well-nigh  universal  good- will.  For 
Lord  Russell  was  right,  and  the  poet  wrong.  Gov- 
ernment causes  and  cures  countless  ills.  You  can- 
not for  a  day  exercise  your  vast  powers  without 
helping  and  hurting  thousands.  Wise  or  unwise, 
right  or  wrong,  your  acts  will  cut  deep  into  hu- 
man lives.  We  trust  that  you  sleep  well. 

Frankly,  again,  there  have  been  some  things  we 
do  not  like.  Like  your  predecessor  you  in  your 
youth  revolted  against  that  system  of  so-called  pro- 
tection which,  in  its  present  phase,  we  count  an 
indefensible  surrender,  first  of  your  party,  and  then 
of  the  government,  to  greed ;  and  you,  like  him, 
have  failed  to  defend  in  plain  words  this  acquies- 
cence of  manhood  against  that  rebellion  of  youth. 
When  you  touched  upon  your  change  of  heart, 
speaking  to  young  faces,  in  the  place  of  your 
youth,  your  words  went  lame.  You  said  then  that 
you  still  approved  of  your  youthful  principles, 
that  you  held  them  still  orthodox  and  sound  — 

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GREETINGS   TO   THE   PRESIDENTS 

"  if  only  the  application  of  them  is  not  carried  to 
such  an  extreme  as  to  interfere  with  the  public 
welfare."  You  certainly  cannot  believe  that  free 
trade  or  any  other  laissez-faire  principles  run  riot 
in  our  present  tariff  laws.  Now  that  you  have  de- 
clared yourself  a  protectionist,  however,  we  will  not 
ask  you  to  act  as  if  you  had  never  ceased  to  be  a 
free-trader.  We  should  like  you  to  study  the  life 
of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  But  we  will  be  content  for  the 
present  if  you  will  merely  bring  us  back  to  pro- 
tection —  if  you  will  merely  insist  that  Congress 
shall  squeeze  the  sheer  robbery  out  of  the  sched- 
ules, although  the  real  protection  remains.  All  you 
have  said  since  election  day  indicates  that  this  is 
your  purpose.  Since  you  have  progressed  thus  far, 
we  have  our  hopes  concerning  the  next  step. 

Frankly,  again,  we  could  wish  there  had  been  in 
your  campaigns  for  the  nomination  of  your  party, 
and  then  for  election,  less  apparent  dependence  on 
the  help  and  favor  of  your  predecessor.  It  gave, 
alike  to  your  rivalry  with  other  leaders  in  your  own 
party  and  to  your  contest  with  the  candidate  of  the 
opposition,  a  character  not  unexampled  in  our  his- 
tory. That  Van  Buren  was  similarly  championed 

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GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

has  not  been  to  his  credit  with  historians.  But  we 
Americans  understand  personal  loyalties,  and  re- 
spect them,  too,  when  they  do  not  mean  disloy- 
alty to  principle  or  to  us.  Let  us  feel  that  in  office 
you  hold  yourself  responsible  only  to  us  and  to 
principle,  and  we  will  not  malignantly  keep  you  in 
mind  of  the  manner  of  your  elevation.  But  we  do 
not  envy  you  the  difficult  choices  you  will  have  to 
make  between  independence  and  gratitude.  There 
is  but  one  safe  rule,  we  think.  Do  the  right,  and 
be  careless  of  interpretations.  We  shall  probably 
understand  and  approve ;  but  since  you  are  only 
one  man,  charged  with  the  interests  of  millions,  it 
is  not  quite  of  the  first  importance  whether  we  do 
you  justice  or  not. 

Frankly,  again,  we  do  not  like  your  apparent 
participation  in  an  insincerity  which  your  party 
has  too  long  practiced  successfully.  Every  four 
years  it  goes  before  the  country  with  words  which 
can  only  be  interpreted  as  a  demand  for  interfer- 
ence by  the  Government  of  the  nation  between  the 
two  races  now  living  together  in  great  numbers  in 
the  Southern  States  ;  and  yet,  though  in  full  con- 
trol of  all  departments  of  that  Government,  your 

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GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

i 

party  takes  no  such  action  as  it  seems  to  demand. 
We  could  dismiss  the  practice  as  harmless,  since  it 
deceives  few;  but  lying  is  objectionable  in  itself. 
Ins  uncomplimentary  in  this  instance  to  the  intel- 
ligence_of  the  country,  and  particularly  to  that  of 
the  unfortunate  race  most  concerned.  We  believe 
you  will  in  time  set  yourself  against  this  practice. 
For  of  the  things  we  like  there  is  none  we  like 
better  than  your  impassioned  declaration  in  the 
heat  of  your  campaign  that  you  did  not  wish  to  be 
President  of  half  your  country,  and  your  decision 
to  break  all  precedents  of  nearly  half  a  century 
and  go  and  offer  yourself  in  person  to  our  fellow- 
citizens  of  the  South.  We  cannot  help  thinking 
that  your  thorough  awareness  of  our  place  in  the 
world  as  one  great  republic  prompted  you  to  this 
manliness  and  candor.  We  cannot  afford  to  keep  a 
Poland,  an  Ireland,  in  our  system.  But  sheer  senti- 
ment played  its  part.  You  would  be  rid  of  the 
dominance  of  "old,  unhappy,  far  off  things." 
You  know  already  how  warmly  the  South  re- 
sponds to  your  challenge.  We  think  we  can  assure 
you  that  your  course  has  alienated  no  Northern 
friends  worth  keeping. 

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GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

Of  course  the  problem  of  the  African  in  our 
body  politic,  as  in  our  industries,  our  social  rela- 
tions, remains.  You  do  not,  we  are  sure,  fancy  you 
have  solved  it ;  nor  are  we  ready  to  tell  you  how  to 
solve  it.  We  are  not  at  all  sure  there  is  any  solu- 
tion, and  fancy  it  may  be  misleading  to  use  that 
word,  or  "problem,"  at  all.  What  we  have  to  do 
with  is  a  situation,  a  condition,  desperately  perma- 
nent, yet  measurably  changing  and  changeable. 
No  mere  ingenuity  will  transform  it.  Evasion  and 
dodging  will  not  avoid  it.  Violence  usually  height- 
ens the  difficulties  inseparable  from  it.  It  will  al- 
ways be  in  your  power  to  stir  its  embers  into  angry 
flames;  your  power  to  alter  it  for  the  better  is 
doubtful.  We  commend  to  you,  therefore,  the 
spirit  and  the  methods,  the  infinite  patience  and 
sweet  reasonableness,  of  that  one  among  your  pre- 
decessors who  did,  in  fact,  nevertheless  deal  with 
this  perplexing  situation  more  boldly  than  anyone 
else  ever  did.  You  are  less  fortunate  than  he,  in 
that  to  him  it  presented  a  reasonably  plain  ques- 
tion of  right  and  wrong.  You  are  more  fortunate, 
in  that  you  can  freely  take  counsel  with  the  true 
and  accepted  representatives  of  both  these  great 

21  I 


GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

masses  of  human  beings,  who  find  their  desti- 
nies linked  together  under  our  flag.  We  are  con- 
fident that  at  least  you  will  not,  by  flying  in  the 
face  of  facts,  and  contradicting  racial  human  na- 
ture, aggravate  what  you  cannot  alleviate,  merely 
disturb  what  you  cannot  change  ;  yet  that  no  force 
or  agency  which  makes  for  human  progress  will 
find  cause  to  upbraid  you  for  coldness  or  neg- 
lect. 

We  are  glad  you  have  been  a  judge.  Granting 
you  consecration  instead  of  ambition,  we  think  you 
will  find  that  to  do  justice  among  men  will  be 
your  most  constant  function,  though  you  wear  no 
ermine.  Our  hope  is  the  greater,  because  you  have 
propounded  no  theory  of  life,  profess  no  allegiance 
to  any  one  principle  in  your  own  life,  but  have 
merely  risen  from  task  to  task  by  virtue  of  effici- 
ency and  good  nature.  You  will  not  set  obiter  dicta 
above  decisions.  The  case  itself  will  be  your  busi- 
ness, and  you  will  wait  for  cases  to  come  up  before 
you  decide  them. 

In  nothing  will  that  habit  and  procedure  serve 
you  better  than  in  your  effort,  following  your  pre- 
decessor's lead,  to  make  government  stand  for  right 

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GREETINGS   TO    THE    PRESIDENTS 

as  between  man  and  man,  class  and  class,  force  and 
force,  in  all  its  relations  to  our  appallingly  complex 
industrial  system.  To  proceed  from  one  specific 
evil  to  another,  to  formulate  no  rules  not  based  on 
actual  experience,  to  try  no  mere  experiments  — 
to  go  on  step  by  step  —  this,  simple  as  it  seems,  is 
the  sole  secret  of  England's  success  in  free  gov- 
ernment. She  arrives  at  generalizations  only  by 
amassing  precedents.  Her  genius  is  the  distrust 
of  genius,  and  her  caution  and  foresight  consist  in 
keeping  pace  with  the  demands  of  her  civilization, 
not  in  running  ahead  to  meet  them. 

It  is  better  to  go  slowly  than  to  go  wrong.  You 
do  not  possess,  we  do  not  think  you  imagine  that 
you  possess,  the  colossal  genius  to  direct  into  new 
channels  the  immense  social  forces  now  contend- 
ing on  this  continent  as  on  others,  to  devise  and 
impose  a  new  plan  for  producing  and  distributing 
wealth.  But  you  have  the  training  and  knowl- 
edge to  correct  abuses  of  the  plan  now  in  opera- 
tion. At  many  points  we  have  broken  with  the 
individualism  of  the  past,  though  we  once  thought 
it  the  essence  of  our  democracy.  Perhaps  we  are 
moving  toward  socialism.  If  it  is  the  best  and  final 

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GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

form  of  society,  however,  we  shall  attain  it  with- 
out forcing  our  pace.  We  do  not  know  our  goal, 
and  must  yet  hold  fast  to  all  that  has  proved 
soundest  in  our  past  experience. 

Your  limitations,  therefore,  commend  you, 
Mr.  President.  Our  greeting  is  the  more  cor- 
dial because  we  do  not  take  you,  and  you  do  not 
take  yourself,  for  a  man  of  destiny ;  because  we 
are  not  moved  to  make  our  salutation  an  obei- 
sance. 

Nevertheless,  we  commend  to  you  all  the  in- 
spiration to  be  got  from  considering  the  magni- 
tude of  your  trust,  the  terrible  height  to  which 
you  are  lifted  up  by  our  will  and  choice.  Your 
station  is  like  Caesar's,  or  Charlemagne's.  It  is  not 
less  because  railroad  and  steamship,  electricity 
and  the  press,  bring  far  things  near  and  make  the 
mysterious  commonplace.  Because  you  hold  it, 
Europe  and  Asia  are  daily  mindful  of  you.  Main- 
tain it,  then,  as  we  have  no  doubt  you  will,  with 
dignity,  and  be  conscious  always  that  the  great 
mass  of  your  countrymen,  of  all  races  and  parties 
and  creeds,  know  instinctively  the  line  between 
that  criticism  and  opposition  which  a  republic 


GREETINGS   TO    THE    PRESIDENTS 

permits  and  that  which  patriotism  sternly  for- 
bids. 

Good-morning,    Mr.    President  —  and   good 
fortune ! 


G 


TO  WILLIAM  H.  TAFT 

MARCH  4,    1913 

OOD-EVENING,  Mr.  President. 


And  pray  believe  us  when  we  assure  you 
of  the  same  hearty  good  will  with  which  we  bade 
you  good-morning  four  years  ago.  You  were  then 
taking  up  the  most  difficult  of  roles,  and  we  sin- 
cerely wished  you  well  in  it.  To-day,  in  laying 
down  your  great  office,  you  are  taking  up  a  role 
almost  equally  difficult  —  that  of  a  private  citizen 
who  has  been  President.  In  that  role,  too,  we 
heartily  wish  you  well. 

More  than  that,  Mr.  President :  the  good  will 
of  a  single  journal  is  not  important,  but  we  are 
also  convinced,  strange  as  it  seems  in  view  of  the 
overwhelming  character  of  your  defeat,  that  you 
still  have  the  good  will  of  the  mass  of  your  coun- 
trymen. Not  of  all,  of  course.  You  have  been 
assailed  with  almost  unexampled  bitterness,  and 
we  cannot  doubt  that  a  considerable  number  of 

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GREETINGS    TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

your  assailants  sincerely  felt  the  animosity  they 
expressed.  Perhaps  we  should  go  further  still  and 
concede  that  this  animosity  can  by  no  means  be 
attributed  entirely  to  personal  disappointments 
and  resentments.  Much  of  it  doubtless  comes  of 
a  respectable  and  citizenly  disapproval  of  what,  as 
President,  you  have  done  and  failed  to  do.  Never- 
theless, we  are  quite  sure  that  in  respect  of  the 
real  feeling  of  the  mass  of  your  countrymen  to- 
ward you  the  tone  of  the  press  and  other  organs 
of  public  sentiment  is  a  better  criterion  than  the 
returns  of  the  election.  As  you  fortunately  pos- 
sess a  sense  of  humor,  we  venture  to  assure  you 
that  we,  the  people,  have  voted  you  out  of  office 
with  much  the  same  friendliness  with  which  we 
called  you  to  our  highest  service. 

Here,  you  will  agree,  is  matter  for  reflection. 
An  epigram  promptly  suggests  itself:  The  man 
is  popular,  but  not  the  President.  But  we  do  not 
like  epigrams.  They  get  rid  of  difficulties  ;  they 
do  not  solve  them.  This  one  does  not  explain  the 
disappointment  of  your  Administration.  For  it 
has  been  a  disappointment,  a  great  disappoint- 
ment. With  your  admirable  candor  you  have 

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GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

frankly  told  us  that  you  yourself  share  with  us  all 
precisely  that  feeling  about  it. 

Why,  then,  has  it  been  a  disappointment? 

Assured  of  our  liking,  you  will  not  resent  our 
cognizance  of  the  harshest  view  of  the  matter.  In- 
deed, you  have  come  near  taking  it  yourself,  for 
from  the  beginning  you  have  expressed  doubts  of 
your  fitness  for  the  presidency,  along  with  a  pref- 
erence for  another  kind  of  public  service  — 
namely,  the  judicial.  Looking  at  the  matter 
broadly,  we  feel  bound  to  agree  with  you,  though 
we  nevertheless  admire  rather  than  merely  depre- 
cate the  several  decisions  you  have  made  to  go 
contrary  to  your  own  self-knowledge ;  for  we  be- 
lieve that  you  took  the  presidency,  as  you  took 
the  governorship  of  the  Philippines,  from  a  sense 
of  duty  and  not  from  preference.  Still,  we  do 
agree  with  you,  and  mainly  for  the  reason  you 
yourself  have  given  —  to  wit,  that  you  are  not  a 
politician. 

Do  not  mistake  us ;  we  mean  no  flattery ;  we 
use  the  word  in  its  proper  sense,  and  not  at  all 
as  a  term  of  reproach.  For  four  years  politics  has 
been  your  business;  and  it  is  not  a  low  business. 

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GREETINGS   TO    THE    PRESIDENTS 

It  is  really  a  high  and  noble  business.  That  low 
men,  governed  by  low  motives,  constantly  engage  in 
it  does  not  prove  the  contrary.  The  abuse  of  polit- 
ical skill  by  such  men  —  the  Cardinal  Antonellis, 
the  Marats,  the  Burrs  and  Quays  and  Platts  — 
makes  no  case  against  the  splendid  use  of  it,  for 
the  welfare  of  great  communities,  by  the  Cavours 
and  Bismarcks,  the  Gladstones  and  Jeffersons  and 
Lincolns. 

That  skill,  that  art,  for  it  is  an  art,  you  clearly 
have  not  possessed.  The  want  of  it  is  quite  as  ap- 
parent in  the  most  praiseworthy  as  in  the  least 
defensible  of  your  presidential  endeavors.  When 
you  set  yourself  to  establish  the  entirely  sound 
policy  of  reciprocity  with  Canada,  you  defended 
it  with  an  indiscretion  of  speech  that  potently 
helped  its  enemies  to  defeat  it.  When,  with  the 
best  of  motives,  you  essayed  to  conciliate  the 
South,  you  fatuously  continued  to  listen  to  coun- 
sels which  you  should  have  known  would  be  fatal 
to  that  patriotic  enterprise.  Worst  of  all,  after 
fully  committing  yourself  to  the  plan  of  an  hon- 
est Republican  revision  of  the  tariff  and  leading 
the  country  to  expect,  as  you  yourself  expected, 

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GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

that  it  would  be  a  revision  downward,  you  put 
yourself  and  your  policy  into  the  hands  of  men 
whom  every  instinct  of  a  true  politician  would 
have  prompted  you  to  distrust.  Then  you  capped 
the  climax  by  accepting,  at  the  worst  moment, 
the  worst  conceivable  advice,  and  in  violation  of 
your  own  good  nature,  your  own  sense  of  justice, 
you  used  your  power  of  patronage  against  men  you 
should  have  trusted  and  in  behalf  of  men  who 
had  undone  you.  It  was  a  thing  to  make  the 
angels  weep.  We  cannot  forbear  reminding  you 
— though  perhaps  you  never  knew  it  —  of  how, 
at  that  crisis  of  your  career,  we  fairly  went  on  our 
knees  to  you  to  take  the  opposite  course. 

It  was  lamentable.  To  great  numbers  of  your 
countrymen  it  was  also  the  crudest  of  political 
surprises.  For  they  had  known  you  as  an  admir- 
able judge;  competent  critics  have  said,  a  great 
judge.  But  to  review  action  judicially,  justly,  is 
one  thing ;  to  use  good  judgment  in  the  stress  of 
action  is  another  thing  — and  the  higher  of  these 
two  gifts  you  have  not  displayed.  You  have  also 
failed  to  display  certain  other  gifts  that  go  to  make 
a  great  Executive,  a  great  man  of  affairs,  a  great 

220 


GREETINGS   TO    THE    PRESIDENTS 

politician.  You  have  shown  good  sense,  but  not 
inspiration ;  sound  principles,  but  not  the  grand 
style  in  presenting  and  defending  them ;  you  have 
the  power  of  clear  and  reasonable  speech,  but 
none  of  the  eloquence  that  stirs  the  blood  and 
moistens  the  eyelids;  you  win  men's  liking,  but 
not  their  devotion. 

And  yet,  by  the  irony  of  fate,  it  was  your  lot 
to  face  a  situation  from  which  only  a  very  great 
politician  could  have  emerged  with  credit !  You 
were  the  leader  of  a  party  which  had  lost  its  pris- 
tine virtue,  which  had  fallen  under  evil  influ- 
ences, which  was  already  breaking  into  bitterly 
hostile  factions.  You  were  the  chosen  heir  of  a 
great  political  charlatan,  who  thus  left  you  to  face 
the  dangers  he  had  himself  avoided ;  of  a  man 
who,  having  sown  the  wind,  permitted  you,  in 
the  name  of  friendship,  to  reap  the  whirlwind. 

Well,  you  have  reaped  it;  in  the  language  of 
the  street,  which  even  Shakespeare  sometimes 
found  indispensable,  you  have  "got  what  was 
coming  to  you."  Your  party  is  disrupted.  Your 
administration  is  accounted  a  failure.  And  the 
man  whom  you  thought  your  best  friend,  and 

221 


GREETINGS   TO   THE   PRESIDENTS 

who  had  the  most  to  do  with  your  elevation,  has 
sought  to  win  his  own  way  back  into  power  on 
the  strength  of  your  discomfiture ! 

Why,  then,  do  you  ask,  are  not  we  also,  and 
others  like  us,  since  we  began  as  your  good- wish- 
ers, now  reproaching  you  ?  The  best  answer,  Mr. 
President,  is  the  smile  on  your  own  lips,  the  twin- 
kle in  your  eye,  the  undiminished  sanity  of  your 
entire  deportment.  You  have  lost,  but  you  are  a 
good  loser.  You  have  been  humiliated,  but  you 
have  not  whined  or  whimpered  or  sunk  into 
melancholy.  Best  of  all,  you  have  not  sought  to 
throw  the  blame  on  your  associates  and  subordi- 
nates. If  you  have  failed  as  President,  neverthe- 
less, as  an  American  man  — 

But  no,  the  epigram  is  still  misleading.  Even  as 
President  you  have  had  successes.  Even  when, 
as  President,  you  have  seemed  to  fail  most  obvi- 
ously, there  is  room  to  question  whether  the  fail- 
ures may  not  have  been  in  some  measure  only 
apparent,  only  temporary.  You  did  not  persuade 
your  party  to  revise  the  tariff  honestly ;  in  the 
crucial  moments  of  that  struggle  you  were  piti- 
ably hoodwinked.  Nevertheless,  you  have  faced 

222 


GREETINGS   TO    THE    PRESIDENTS 

the  issue,  you  have  not  run  away  from  it;  and 
therefore  the  reform  is  imminent.   In  that  regard 
the  outcome  of  your  leadership  still  permits,  as 
its  beginning  suggested,  a  comparison  with  Sir 
Robert  Peel's.  Seemingly,  you  have  failed,  too, 
in  your  still  more  commendable  endeavor,  stead- 
fast and  long  continued,  to  quiet  the  mood  of 
wild  expectation  in  which,  by  the  extraordinary 
vagaries  of  your  predecessor,  your  countrymen 
had  been  left.  That  mood  still  prevails ;  there  is 
still  danger  that  it  will,  before  it  wanes,  do  some 
damage  to  our  institutions.  But  your  steadfastness 
in  sanity  has  not  been  altogether  wasted.  What 
is  left  of  your  party  still  stands  for  preservation, 
not  for  destruction,  for  sense  and  not  for  sheer  and 
unruled  impulse.  Even  in  the  loftiest  and  boldest 
of  your  enterprises,  you  have  not  failed  entirely. 
The  arbitration  treaties  are  indeed  emasculated; 
we  do  not  wonder  that  you  hesitate  to  sign  them. 
But  they  are  not  dead.  It  is  quite  believable  that 
a  century  hence  they  will  be  accounted  the  begin- 
ning of  the  world's  permanent  peace.  The  glory 
of  it  will  be  America's,  even  if  it  is  not  yours. 
In  all  probability  glory  will  not  be  your  por- 
223 


GREETINGS   TO    THE    PRESIDENTS 

tion,  Mr.  President.  We  are  speaking  with  entire 
candor  and  that  is  our  impression,  as  it  is  also, 
quite  likely,  your  own.  Still,  we  know  what 
changes  time  can  work  concerning  the  esteem 
of  Americans  for  their  Presidents.  It  is  even  now 
working  a  great  change  concerning  the  reputa- 
tion of  your  unfortunate  Ohio  predecessor,  Pres- 
ident Hayes.  To  the  multitude  his  name  is  still 
a  signal  for  ignorant  depreciation.  Nevertheless, 
to  the  trained  and  competent  historians  who  are 
beginning  to  review  his  administration  he  appears 
more  and  more  as  a  man  greatly  underestimated, 
as  a  President  who,  notwithstanding  the  cloud 
which  will  always  rest  upon  his  name,  rendered 
to  the  American  people  services  that  are  simply 
incalculable.  He  was  the  true  initiator  of  civil- 
service  reform;  he  was  the  first  President  after 
Lincoln  who  honestly  tried  to  treat  the  South- 
erners as  his  countrymen. 

But  we  forbear,  Mr.  President;  the  worst  of 
Job's  afflictions  was  his  comforters.  What  we  had 
in  mind  to  do  was  not  to  offer  you  smelling-salts, 
nor  yet  to  read  you  lectures,  but  to  make  you  our 
respects. 

224 


GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

You  have  chosen,  wisely  we  think,  to  become 
a  teacher  of  young  Americans,  and  you  are  am- 
ply equipped  for  your  new  duties.  You  will  not, 
we  are  confident,  teach  them  bitterness.  You  will 
not  sully  their  "white  shields  of  expectation." 
You  will,  on  the  contrary,  try  to  prepare  them  to 
do  their  best  cheerfully,  in  all  circumstances,  for 
their  country.  Nevertheless,  there  will  come  at 
times,  in  spite  of  all  your  good  nature,  intervals 
of  austerity.  For  you  have  walked  the  heights  of 
human  destiny;  you  have  sounded  the  depths 
of  human  meanness  and  depravity.  Sometimes, 
beyond  your  smile,  you  will  wear  that  air  of 
"  grave  and  melancholy  reflection  "  which  Macau- 
lay  praised  in  Thucydides.  And  it  will  be  well.  It 
will  be  well  that  these  young  minds  shall  learn 
from  you,  though  you  will  not  wish  to  teach  it, 
something  of  the  human  weaknesses  that  lead  to 
great  disasters,  something  of  the  baleful  human 
passions  that  keep  us  all,  nations  and  men  alike, 
forever  on  the  verge  of  tragedy. 


G 


TO  WOODROW  WILSON 

MARCH  4,   1913 

OOD-MORNING,  Mr.  President! 


To  you,  indeed,  it  hardly  seems  needful 
that  this  journal  should  offer  assurances  of  its  own 
good- will  and  good  wishes.  In  all  its  life  no  politi- 
cal enterprise  has  ever  engaged  its  sympathies  more 
deeply  than  that  which  ends  to-day  as  you  take 
your  solemn  oath  of  office.  But  to  you,  too,  we  can 
offer  whatever  heartening  there  may  be  in  our  con- 
viction that  you  also  have  the  good-will  and  the 
good  wishes  of  the  majority  of  Americans. 

We  have  no  fear,  Mr.  President,  that  you  will 
overestimate  the  value  of  our  own  or  any  other 
assurances  in  that  matter ;  even  if  you  agree  with 
them,  you  will  not  vainly  imagine  that  your  pres- 
ent great  prestige  and  popularity  are  a  secure  pos- 
session. For  we  feel  sure  that  you  are  not  politically 
short-sighted.  We  feel  sure  that  you  do  not  need  to 
be  told  that  the  more  auspiciously  a  man  enters 
upon  a  great  trial  of  his  quality  the  more  he  has  to 

226 


GREETINGS   TO   THE   PRESIDENTS 

fear  from  anything  like  failure  to  meet  it  worthily. 
You  have  shown  convincingly  that  you  understand 
the  incessant  nature  of  democracy's  demands  and 
the  necessity  of  meeting  them  continuously,  un- 
falteringly—  of  fighting  all  one's  battles  through, 
as  Grant  said  —  if  one  would  survive  politically. 

In  that  clear-eyed  envisagement  of  obligations 
and  of  dangers  we  find,  indeed,  one  of  the  chief 
sources  of  our  hope  in  your  administration ;  for  we 
regard  it  as  one  of  the  many  proofs  of  your  politi- 
cal competency. 

On  this  point,  no  doubt,  we  differ  with  many 
other  observers  of  your  career.  For  we  do  not  in 
the  least  share  the  apprehension  that  your  long 
years  of  devotion  to  academic  tasks  will  be  found 
to  have  dimmed  your  eyes  to  harsh  realities.  On 
the  contrary,  we  take  comfort  from  the  circum- 
stance that  you  have  all  your  life  been  studying 
in  quiet  such  problems  as  now  confront  you,  such 
careers  as  you  yourself  are  now  attempting.  We 
are  happy  to  feel  that,  like  most  Americans, 
but  unlike  your  immediate  predecessor,  you  like 
politics;  that  you  understand  politics;  that  you 
have  already  proved  yourself  an  excellent  politi- 

227 


GREETINGS   TO   THE   PRESIDENTS 

cian.  We  shall  be  disappointed  if,  before  the  end, 
you  shall  not  have  proved  yourself  a  great  politi- 
cian. 

So  shall  we  all  be,  Mr.  President,  and  so  will  you 
be ;  for  none  of  us  has  indicated  a  clearer  compre- 
hension than  you  have  indicated  of  what  the  times 
and  the  country's  mood  really  demand  of  you. 
Administrative  skill,  executive  efficiency  —  these, 
of  course,  are  always  demanded  of  a  President. 
But  you  know  that  to-day,  for  you,  they  will  not 
be  enough.  You  know  that  you  face  a  crisis ;  that 
you  may,  quite  conceivably,  inaugurate  an  epoch. 
Before  we  take  up,  with  other  journals,  our  con- 
stant duty  of  unsparing  criticism,  perhaps  you  will 
permit  us  briefly  to  indicate  what  we  conceive  your 
full  task  and  opportunity  to  be. 

It  is  to  lead  democracy  in  a  fresh  advance  which 
it  now  clamors  for.  It  is  to  guide  democracy  wisely 
while  it  compasses  and  overcomes  a  new  kind  of 
opposition  that  for  some  generations  has  been 
erecting  itself  among  us;  a  kind  of  opposition  to 
democracy  which  is  all  the  more  baffling  and  con- 
founding because  it  is,  in  the  main,  an  outcome  of 
democracy  itself;  because  it  is  as  if,  in  our  startled 

228 


GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

battling  with  it,  a  giant  strove  with  his  own  giant 
offspring.  In  this  respect  the  curious  instinct  of 
the  cartoonists  is  no  false  leading,  but  a  true  indi- 
cator of  our  real  predicament.  For  the  real  foe  of 
democracy  in  this  country  wears  no  form  that  privi- 
lege has  ever  worn  before.  It  is  not  monarchical, 
it  is  not  aristocratic,  it  is  not  military,  it  is  not 
clerical.  It  is  entirely  economic  and  industrial. 
The  seat  and  source  of  it  is  neither  court  nor  camp 
nor  church;  his  the  common  market-place.  The 
essence  of  it  is,  to  be  sure,  monopoly,  and  monopoly 
is  old.  But  this  kind  of  monopoly,  self-created  and 
self-sustaining  monopoly,  is  new.  It  is  young  and 
vigorous.  Of  all  the  forces  that  make  against  de- 
mocracy it  is  the  youngest  and  most  vigorous  now 
extant  in  the  world. 

That  is  your  giant  antagonist,  Mr.  President ; 
and  democracy  expects  of  you  nothing  less  than 
that  you  forthwith  prove  yourself  its  Jack  the 
Giant  Killer. 

A  great  expectation,  truly  !  For  the  movement 
you  must  head,  like  most  of  democracy's  periodi- 
cal uprisings  and  self-assertions,  is  vague  and  in- 
stinctive, as  well  as  tremendous.  But  we  cannot 

229 


GREETINGS   TO    THE    PRESIDENTS 

doubt  that  you  both  comprehend  its  sweep  and 
are  striving  to  find  for  it  definite  aims  and  reason- 
able methods.  Fortunately,  you  are  in  deep  sym- 
pathy with  it ;  otherwise  you  could  never  hope  to 
guide  it.  But  fortunately,  too,  you  have  yourself 
written  the  history  of  another  very  similar  move- 
ment—  the  movement  by  which  the  people,  with 
Andrew  Jackson  leading,  once  before  "  took  pos- 
session of  their  government.*'  Turn  to  the  skillful 
phrases  in  which  you  yourself  have  pictured  that 
advance,  estimated  alike  the  gains  and  the  costs  of 
it,  praised  and  blamed  its  leadership,  and  you  will 
find  there  many  a  true  word  and  many  a  sound  re- 
flection that  should  to-day  be  helpful  to  you  and 
to  your  fellows  in  leadership.  For  the  present  age 
seems  plainly  to  demand  of  you  that  in  many  re- 
spects you  be  like  Jackson.  But  it  is  a  later  age ; 
may  it  not  therefore  demand  more  ?  You  have  had 
a  better  training  than  Jackson's,  and  no  such  harsh, 
embittering  antecedents ;  may  we  not,  therefore, 
expect  of  you  less  of  error  and  violence  and  excess, 
and  more  of  restraint  and  of  just  consideration  and 
calm  foresight,  yet  without  loss  of  firmness  in  es- 
sentials ? 

230 


GREETINGS   TO   THE   PRESIDENTS 

Yes,  Mr.  President,  it  is  a  great  expectation,  a 
daunting  expectation.  We  should  be  insincere, 
we  should  be  merely  flattering  you  —  or  any  other 
man  alive,  for  that  matter  —  if  we  pretended  an 
absolute  assurance  of  your  proving  entirely  equal 
to  it.  It  is  enough  that,  like  your  party  and  like  the 
country,  we  should  account  you,  of  all  men  visible 
now  to  the  nation,  the  man  most  likely  to  prove 
equal  to  it. 

We  do  not  neglect  to  note  your  handicaps ;  we 
shall  not  forget  them  when  we  fall  back  into  our 
ordinary  function  of  watchfulness  and  criticism. 
It  was  your  immediate  predecessor's  misfortune  to 
lead  a  party  which  had  been  too  long  in  power;  it 
is  your  misfortune  that  you  lead  a  party  which  has 
been  too  long  out  of  power.  It  lacks  the  training 
power  alone  can  give.  It  has  the  habit  of  irrespon- 
sible protest  and  criticism,  not  of  responsible  ac- 
tion. You  will  be  surrounded  by  men  who  can  speak 
only  from  conviction,  not  from  experience.  To 
keep  your  leadership  you  must  be,  perhaps,  com- 
placent with  ignorance  and  prejudice.  Do  not,  we 
beseech  you,  be  too  complacent ;  for  that  may  prove 
your  greatest  danger.  We  do  not  underestimate  the 

231 


GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

necessity  of  tact  and  consideration  and  whatever 
else  may  make  for  harmony,  but  we  would,  never- 
theless, fortify  you  in  loyalty  to  your  own  superior 
training  and  instincts.  For  it  must  be  with  you  as 
with  every  other  man  lifted  up  to  high  place  and 
great  power.  There  is  no  way  to  spare  you  the  duty 
of  self-reliance ;  there  is  no  way  to  spare  you  the 
loneliness  of  your  great  station.  If  you  relieve  it 
with  a  kitchen  cabinet,  we,  for  one,  shall  not  be 
too  censorious. 

Your  party  is  also  hungry,  for  it  comes  in  from 
a  long  wandering  in  the  desert,  and  from  this  cause, 
too,  you  will  face  temptation  and  must  endure  a 
wearying  importunity.  More  than  that:  because 
your  party  is  unaccustomed  to  power,  it  will  not 
be  at  ease  in  power.  Part  of  your  great  task  in  leader- 
ship will  be  to  teach  it  self-confidence ;  yet  it  will 
be  equally  necessary  to  hold  it  back  from  over-con- 
fidence and  extravagance.  There  will  inevitably  be 
required  of  you  a  constant  and  supremely  difficult 
balancing  of  restraint  and  energy,  of  sympathy 
and  steadfastness,  of  courage  and  caution.  For 
the  full  test  of  you  and  your  party  will  be  noth- 
ing less  than  this:  that  through  you  democracy 

232 


GREETINGS   TO   THE    PRESIDENTS 

shall  win  victories  and  yet  shall  not  abuse 
them. 

But  if,  Mr.  President,  we  are  thus  candidly 
mindful  of  all  that  confronts  you,  we  are  also  hap- 
pily mindful  of  much,  of  very  much,  to  hearten 
and  to  help  you.  Happily  for  you,  as  for  us  all,  you 
are  the  choice  of  no  one  section,  but  of  the  whole 
country.  As  your  elevation  excludes  no  one  section 
from  power,  you  will  escape  a  kind  of  bitterness  that 
has  borne  hard  on  many  of  your  predecessors;  and 
yet  you  will  not  lack  the  fine  inspiration  to  be  drawn 
from  the  peculiar  pride  in  you  of  a  particular  sec- 
tion, a  section  strong  in  loyalties.  Southern-born, 
it  is  your  privilege  to  restore  the  South  to  a  full 
share  in  the  country's  affairs,  to  help  her  prove  her 
fitness  for  it,  and  to  revive,  let  us  hope  forever,  the 
great  tradition  of  her  spacious  patriotism  in  the 
early  days  of  the  Republic. 

Less  than  this,  perhaps,  but  far  from  little,  will 
be  the  inspiration  of  your  academic  memories.  At 
every  crisis  there  will  be  the  inspiring  conscious- 
ness that  to  an  extraordinary  degree  you  represent 
in  American  public  life  the  training  and  ideals  of 
American  colleges.  There  will  be  something  still 

233 


GREETINGS   TO    THE    PRESIDENTS 

more  poignant  —  the  passionate,  intimate  appeal 
of  your  own  ancient  university,  calling  upon  you, 
as  with  bells  and  songs,  to  win  for  her  still  greater 
honors.  If  need  be,  alma  mater  may  serve  you  better 
still.  If  the  worst  comes  to  the  worst,  if  the  path 
of  duty  becomes  the  way  of  sacrifice,  if  it  so  hap- 
pens that  you  must  lay  down  even  popularity  itself 
on  the  altar  of  patriotism,  you  can  still  see  the  tall 
tower  with  which  she  commemorates  that  other 
President  of  whom,  in  the  hour  of  his  seeming 
failure,  you  yourself  wrote:  "  The  men  who  assess 
his  fame  in  the  future  will  be  no  partisans,  but 
men  who  love  candor,  courage,  honesty,  strength, 
unshaken  capacity,  and  high  purpose  such  as 
his." 

Yes,  Mr.  President,  the  task  is  great,  the  dangers 
manifold,  and  manifold  the  temptations.  But  all 
your  youth  will  now,  surely,  rise  up  and  reinforce 
your  manhood.  The  great  thing  has  happened  — 
has  happened  to  you,  of  all  men.  Surely  you  will 
not  quail  before  it.  Surely  you  will  not  lack  in 
the  face  of  opportunity  and  of  danger  the  supreme 
human  quality ;  you  will  not  lack  courage  —  the 
kind  of  courage  that  is  one  with  sincerity.  As  you 

234 


GREETINGS   TO    THE    PRESIDENTS 

go  to  meet  Fate's  call,  the  time's  demand,  your 
country's  summons,  your  mood  will  not  be  one  of 
pride  or  self-sufficiency;  yet  surely  it  will  be  as 
if,  in  your  own  heart,  a  drum  beat,  or  a  trumpet 
sounded. 


THE    END 


(Ibe  Rtoersi&c 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U  .  S   .  A 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


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